Some honeybees in parts of Asia have an effective way of keeping intruders out of their hives. They strike them – with lightning speed. Video included in a study published July 10 in the journal Ecology shows how they chase away ants.
Ants are often attracted to beehives because of their large supply of larvae, pupae and honey. Intrusion can cause devastating damage to honeybee colonies, as the ants even eat the bees’ protein-rich eggs. The authors from Japan’s National Institute for Environmental Studies believe that the beating movement is a way for the bees to chase away thieves without wasting much energy.
It seems that this technique of flapping the wings require less effort than other movements such as wing-fanning. Fanning is when a bee flaps its wings to blow an ant away without making contact with its body. As anyone who has had ants on a countertop can tell you, this makes a difference in fending off that long line of ant invaders.
(Related: What’s going on with spotted lanternflies?)
According to the authorsIt is still unclear whether other species of honeybees exhibit this wing-beating behavior. However, this study and other research indicate that different species and subspecies of honeybees use different defensive behaviors depending on the risk of ant predation.
“This novel wing-flapping behavior turned out to be the primary method Japanese honeybees use to defend themselves against invading ants,” Co-authors Yugo Seko, Kiyohito Morii, and Yoshiko Sakamoto wrote in a blog post accompanying the article“The results of this study provide important insights into the evolution of bee defense behavior in different regions around the world.”
Here are more behaviors insects have been caught on camera, from the bizarre to the downright innovative.
Cicadas pee in jet streams
These noisy insects, known for their cyclical invasions and hypersexual activity, can urinate in high-speed jets that are more similar to large mammals. Insects that generally feed on xylem sap from trees urinate in droplets because it loses less energy, using their butts to catapult it awayCicadas eat so much sap that it would be too tiring to wipe away all the drops one by one.
“Urinating in jet streams causes cicadas to generate a large volume of fluid excretion,” said bioengineer/biophysicist Elio Challita Popular science“This is crucial because these insects have to ingest a significant amount of xylem sap every day. So they also have to excrete large amounts.”
(Related: How Insect Charmers Help Document the Lives of Flies, Dung Beetles, and More.)
Putting the ‘ant’ in antibiotics and chopping off legs
According to a Study December 2023Matabele ants may be able to tell if a wound is infected and treat it with antibiotics produced in their saliva. Their saliva is probably loaded with antimicrobial compounds and proteins. The antibiotics are secreted from their metapleural gland, which is located on the side of their thorax. This secretion consists of 112 components, half of which are known to have antimicrobial or wound-healing effects.
“The hydrocarbon profile of the ant cuticle changes as a result of wound infection,” says study co-author and animal ecologist Erik Frank said in a statement“With the exception of humans, I know of no other living being that can perform such advanced medical wound treatments.”
Carpenter ants do not have the same glandular secretions. Instead, they seem to treat their nestmate’s wounds by cleaning them or removing the limb altogether. It is possible that the insect tailors its treatment to the type of injury.
The experimental treatments appear to be working. In thigh injuries where the ants consistently amputated the defects, the study authors saw a 90 to 95 percent success rate.
Nothing to see here…
The small, colorful, jumping spider species Siler collingwoodi use a combination of camouflage and some prized mimicry to deter hungry predators. When stressed, these arachnids, found in China and Japan, mimic the way an ant walks to avoid being eaten.
a Study May 2023 found that this combination works to avoid spiders that eat other spiders, but doesn’t work as well on hungry praying mantises. For the S. collingwoodis, It is advantageous to mimic an ant because they generally do not taste very good to other insects and may be armed with spines on their bodies, venom or chemical defenses. Some species of “exploding” ants such as Colobopsis saundersi will also fight and bite back if stuck.
“S. collingwoodi is not necessarily a perfect imitator, as its gait and trajectory showed strong similarities with several ant species,” Hua Zeng, an ecologist at Peking University in China said in a statement“Being a general mimic rather than a perfect mimic of one ant species could benefit the spiders because they could then expand their range if the ant models occupy different habitats.”
