Worker ants store fat for lean times

July 27, 2006

U.S. scientists found ants have the ability to store excess fat and pass it to colony members through lipid-rich oral secretions or unfertilized eggs.

University of Florida researcher Daniel Hahn says for perennial organisms, such as ant colonies, investing heavily in nutrient stores when food availability is high is a potential bet-hedging strategy for dealing with times of famine.

"Understanding the regulation of nutrient reserves, particularly fat storage, at the individual and colony levels is critical to understanding both the division of labor characteristics of social insect colonies and the evolution of important colony life-history traits such as the timing of reproduction, founding mode and over-wintering behavior," said Hahn.

The unusual research will appear in the September-October issue of the journal Physiological and Biochemical Zoology.

Rate this story - 3.7 /5 (3 votes)

rank
1
2
3
4
5

view popular

Other News

Beyond sunlight: Explorers census 17,650 ocean species between edge of darkness and black abyss (w/ Video)

Biology / Plants & Animals

11 hours ago | 5 / 5 (6) | 0

Census of Marine Life scientists have inventoried an astonishing abundance, diversity and distribution of deep sea species that have never known sunlight - creatures that somehow manage a living in a frigid ...

Rare Charles Darwin book found on toilet bookshelf

Biology / Other

10 hours ago | 4.5 / 5 (2) | 1

(AP) -- An auction house says it is selling a rare first edition of Charles Darwin's "On the Origin of Species" found in a family's guest lavatory in southern England.

Bigger not necessarily better, when it comes to brains

Biology / Plants & Animals

Nov 17, 2009 | 4.5 / 5 (19) | 11

(PhysOrg.com) -- Tiny insects could be as intelligent as much bigger animals, despite only having a brain the size of a pinhead, say scientists at Queen Mary, University of London.

Extinct goat was cold-blooded

Biology / Plants & Animals

Nov 18, 2009 | 4.9 / 5 (34) | 10

(PhysOrg.com) -- An extinct goat that lived on a barren Mediterranean island survived for millions of years by reducing in size and by becoming cold-blooded, which has never before been discovered in mammals.

Right-handed chimpanzees provide clues to the origin of human language

Biology / Plants & Animals

Nov 16, 2009 | 2.5 / 5 (2) | 7

Most of the linguistic functions in humans are controlled by the left cerebral hemisphere. A study of captive chimpanzees at the Yerkes National Primate Research Center (Atlanta, Georgia), reported in the January 2010 issue ...