Ant “Game of Thrones”: A Parasitic Queen Engineers A Chemical Coup D'etat

EARTH, Laniakea Supercluster—In the underground world of ants, palace coups aren’t whispered, they’re chemically engineered. And a newly discovered parasitic queen has perfected the ultimate hostile takeover—trick the workers into murdering their own mother, then seize the throne.

The findings come from a paper published November 17 in Current Biology that reveal a previously unknown form of “third-party matricide” in nature. Researchers focused on two ant species (Lasius orientalis) and (Lasius umbratus) which act as social parasites of other ant colonies (Lasius flavus) and (Lasius japonicus), and the daring Art of War-esque tactic wielded by her highness.

The invading queen first sneaks into the host colony by acquiring its scent, thereby avoiding detection. Once inside, she approaches the resident queen and sprays her with a chemical, likely formic acid, that disrupts the queen’s familiar scent.

In a plot twist worthy of Game of Thrones, that evil potion of sorts triggers the host workers to perceive their mother-queen as a threat, leading them to attack and kill her.

“Ants live in the world of odors,” explained study lead author Keizo Takasuka of Kyushu University in an accompanying statement.

“Before infiltrating the nest, the parasitic queen stealthily acquires the colony’s odor on her body from workers walking outside so that she is not recognized as the enemy,” said Takasuka. “The parasitic ants exploit that ability to recognize odors, we believe, by spraying formic acid to disguise the queen’s normal scent with a repugnant one. This causes the daughters, who normally protected their queen mother, to attack her as an enemy.”

The conniving queen then flees because “she knows the odor of formic acid is very dangerous, because if host workers perceive the odor they would immediately attack her as well.”

She returns periodically to spray the original queen again and again until her followers violently revolt against the monarchy.

Once the original queen is gone, the parasitic queen begins laying her own eggs and the host workers care for her brood, effectively assuming the new ruler.

“This is an example of nature going beyond what we’ve seen in fiction,” said Takasuka.

In the dark tunnels of an ant nest, the stagecraft of a queen takeover reveals that nature’s machinations can be as ruthless and cunning as any sci-fi plot.

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