2014-05-12 10:06:21
One poison can serve as an antidote to another.
Unfortunately, it seems, war is a constant in Nature. War, evidently, is not a conflict between individuals, but between societies. For this reason, perhaps the inventors of war were social insects, particularly ants, which have developed sophisticated combat and defense strategies that have survived to this day, the era of science, allowing them to be studied in detail.
A war of particular intensity is unfolding in the southern United States: the war between the ant species Solenopsis invicta and Nylanderia fulva, popularly known in the US as the red fire ant and the crazy raspberry ant ( ?), respectively. Both species are native to South America, from the region that includes northern Argentina, Paraguay and southern Brazil, and reached the United States as stowaways in international transportation.
The red ant arrived in the city of Mobile, Alabama, USA, by boat, from Argentina, in the 1930s. Since that date, it has expanded rapidly throughout the southern United States as it was not found in that new ecological niche. with other ant species capable of successfully competing against them, and this despite efforts to eradicate it.
However, this situation appears to be changing rapidly. Just over ten years ago, the crazy ant, also native to South America, landed in Texas and Florida. Since then, there has been a significant increase in colonies in the states bordering the Gulf of Mexico. This expansion is occurring at the expense of the red ant.
CHEMICAL WAR
Battles between red and crazy ants often result in victory for the crazy ants. These obtain up to 93% of the resources in dispute. In addition, crazy ants are capable of evicting red ants from their nests.
Curiously, ants other than crazy ants avoid red ones due to their powerful venom, which acts as an insecticide. However, the crazy ant workers dare to attack groups of red ants that have captured food, in turn spreading their own poison to try to weaken or kill them and take the loot from them. Red ants also counterattack by spreading their poison to repel the attack, and even depositing it on the bodies of the crazy workers. As a result, they sometimes end up seriously coated in fire ant venom, which other ants find fatal.
Not so to the crazy ant. A group of researchers from the University of Texas have carried out studies with these two ants, recently published in the journal Science, and have discovered that when the crazy ant comes into contact with the poison of the red one, it immediately begins a sequence of actions that they call “behavior.” detoxifier.” The ant bends in a U shape and touches the end of its abdomen with its jaws, where an opening is located, called an acidopore, through which the ants secrete their venom and also their pheromones and other substances, produced in different specialized glands. A small drop of secretion is deposited in its mandibles, after which the ant vigorously “combs” its body with them. This “hairstyle” is repeated several times.
POISONOUS ANTIDOTE
The researchers carried out a series of simple experiments to test whether or not this behavior protects crazy ants from red ants’ venom. In one of them, they plugged the acidpore of some crazy ants with nail polish before putting them in contact with a superior force of fire ants. More than half of the crazy ants whose acid pore had been plugged, but not those who had had a similar amount of nail polish applied to another part of their body, died within 48 hours as a result of the effect of the poison. of red ants.
The researchers were not satisfied with this discovery and analyzed which component of the secretion of crazy ants is the one that has the detoxifying effect. To do this, they isolated the substances produced by the different glands of the crazy ants and applied them to workers of the Argentine ant (a species of ant similar to the crazy one but that cannot detoxify the venom of the red one), to which they had previously sprayed with poison isolated from red ants. In this way, they discover that the chemical substances secreted by ants that act as alarm or communication pheromones do not have any detoxifying effect. It is, on the contrary, and surprisingly, the venom of the crazy ants that detoxifies that of the red ones. What is this poison?
The analyzes carried out indicated that the poison was the well-known formic acid, an acid similar to vinegar, but more corrosive. Indeed, by spraying Argentine ants with formic acid synthesized in the laboratory, the researchers were able to protect these ants from the lethal effects of fire ant venom. Researchers believe that this protective effect is due to the destruction by formic acid of two enzymes necessary for the action of red ant venom.
Although it remains to be found out how such sophisticated behavior has been selected by evolution, these amazing studies show that one poison can serve as an antidote to another, which confers a fundamental advantage to survive in the harsh war world of ants.
NEW WORK BY JORGE LABORDA.
It can be purchased here:
Chained circumstances. Ed. Lulu
Other works by Jorge Laborda
One Moon, one civilization. Why the Moon tells us that we are alone in the Universe
One Moon one civilization why the Moon tells us we are alone in the universe
The intelligence funnel and other essays
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