WASHINGTON: Ants use their powerful sense of smell to distinguish intruders from safe fellow-ants in their colonies, scientists, including those of Indian-origin, have found.
Scientists at the University of California, Riverside have found that ants communicate using a number of hydrocarbon chemicals present on their cuticles (their outer shells).
The researchers noted that ants, which have evolved some of the largest families of olfactory receptor genes in insects, use their powerful sense of smell to sense the chemicals present on the cuticle of individuals to precisely identify the different members of their society.
“Until now, very little was understood about how ants use olfactory detection of pheromones to recognise individuals belonging to different castes or different colonies in their societies,” said Anandasankar Ray, from the University of California, Riverside in US who led the research team.
“To address this problem, we decided to focus our attention on the worker ants’ antennal neurons and their responses to hydrocarbons on the cuticle,” said Ray.
Ray, who is also the director of the Centre for Disease Vector Research at UC Riverside, was joined in the study by Kavita R Sharma of UC Riverside.
Ray’s team applied a powerful electrophysiology method, to test hydrocarbons present on the worker and queen cuticles that have previously been suspected to act as pheromone cues.
