What a horror story about ant colonies! Don't exclusively trust your sense of smell!
"The queen is dead, long live the queen!
After disguising herself and sneaking behind enemy lines, an invader manipulates a group of loyal subjects into attacking and murdering their own queen. She flees the scene of the crime, returning later to institute a new regime—with herself as matriarch. ... a fairly typical life cycle for some parasitic ant species.
Lasius orientalis and L. umbratus, which take over colonies belonging to related ant species rather than founding their own, are what’s known as temporary social parasites. And as scientists report in Current Biology, they follow the same gruesome playbook .
The parasitic queen ant first avoids suspicion by mingling with host workers, cloaking herself with the characteristic scents of the colony. After locating the host queen, the invader douses her with multiple jets of a foul-smelling abdominal fluid. This substance likely contains formic acid, which masks the queen’s natural odor and makes her smell like an enemy—thus transforming her “from mother to menace,” ...
While the intruder beats a hasty retreat, the host queen’s subjects attack and dispose of their unfortunate ruler, who is, biologically speaking, also their mother. The parasitic queen then returns to lay eggs and take control of the workers, who serve their new queen until they die."
From the abstract:
"Matricide — the killing of a mother by her own genetic offspring — is rarely observed in nature, but not unheard-of. Among animal species in which offspring remain with their mothers, the benefits gained from maternal care are so substantial that eliminating the mother almost never pays, making matricide vastly rarer than infanticide.
Here, we report matricidal behavior in two ant species, Lasius flavus and Lasius japonicus, where workers kill resident queens (their mothers) after the latter have been sprayed with abdominal fluid by parasitic ant queens of the ants Lasius orientalis and Lasius umbratus."
This parasitic ant tricks workers into killing their own queen "Scientists capture a unique—and gruesome—example of matricide in the animal kingdom"
Ants around two similar looking smelling "queens"
After infiltrating a colony and disguising her scent, an invading Lasius orientalis queen (black) sprays a L. flavus host queen (brown) with abdominal fluid—tricking the host workers into attacking and killing their own queen.
Figure 1 Behavioural sequences of two socially parasitic queens causing unwitting matricide by host workers.
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