Thursday, May 21, 2009

Ant Stinger Family Tree

Here's a terrific little article about the stingers in ants, complete with a family tree. Ants apparently evolved from the wasps, and the evolutionary trend is to lose the stingers altogether. Common pests like fire ants seem to still have their stingers primarily to combat vertebrates, not other insects.
at

2 comments:

  1. RonaldoMay 21, 2009 at 8:50 AM

    "Ants apparently evolved from the wasps, and the evolutionary trend is ...."

    But apparently not the Martialis heureka ant.
    http://www.pnas.org/content/early/
    2008/09/13/0806187105.abstract

    ReplyDelete
  2. RonaldoMay 21, 2009 at 9:33 AM

    I'd be more than happy to replace "apparently" in my first comment to "maybe."

    ReplyDelete