The Daily Ant

Pheidole is one of the most diverse ant genera in the world, with 1,004 currently described species. This genus is known for having two worker castes – a “minor” and a “major”. The major caste typically sports a head that is comically larger than minor heads. You can see why Pheidole species are called the “big-headed ants”:

This ant group provides an excellent study system for investigating a fundamental question in ant research: How, and why, do major and minor worker castes evolve? Dr. Jo-anne Holley and colleagues addressed just this question in a study published earlier this year.

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Believe it or not, the title of this article is not clickbait.

This ant is Colobopsis saundersi:

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This is a turtle:

Many people around the world believe that turtles are boring.

This is a turtle ant:

Many people around the world believe that turtle ants are fascinating.

Reportedly, one of the turtle ant characteristics that people love most is how they use their heads to block their nest entrances. But these turtle ants may also provide insights into the evolution of worker castes in ants, as shown recently by Dr. Robert Planqué and colleagues in a new study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.

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Ant researchers have long known that ants swap food and enzymes orally through a process called “trophallaxis” (tro-fuh-lax-is). Ants use a special organ, the crop, as a kind of “social stomach” – many workers eat food only to regurgitate it into larvae. But a recent study has found that this ant spit may serve another critical purpose: communication.

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