How clonal raider ants update their friend-or-foe recognition

How clonal raider ants update their friend-or-foe recognition

For ants, the ability to instantly distinguish nestmates from outsiders who might hijack the colony is crucial. Now, a new study shows that the system that ants use to determine who belongs in the colony is far more flexible than once thought. The findings, published in Current Biology, demonstrate how clonal raider ants update their sense of nestmate identity throughout adulthood through repeated exposure, while still retaining an intrinsic rec…

How Ants Map Social Identity

Researchers found that clonal raider ants can learn to tolerate genetically distinct outsiders through repeated exposure, effectively updating their brain's template for who belongs.