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Author Topic:   butterfly - ant evolutionary arms race
macaroniandcheese 
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Message 1 of 9 (446940)
01-07-2008 3:56 PM


Evolutionary Arms Race: Butterfly vs. Ant - Neatorama
There’s an evolutionary arms race going on between a rare species of butterfly and ants:
Maculinea alcon butterflies infect the nests of Myrmica ants by hatching caterpillars nearby, hoping that the caterpillars will be ”adopted’ and cared for by ants that mistake them for their own young. The caterpillars achieve this by mimicking the surface chemistry of the ants. Getting this chemistry right is important: if an ant doesn’t recognize a caterpillar as one of its own it will eat it, says David Nash, a zoologist at the University of Copenhagen in Denmark.
Successfully adopted caterpillars are bad for the ant colonies, as ants may neglect their own young in favour of the intruders. But the ants are fighting back. “The ant larvae seem to be evolving as a result of being parasitized,” says Nash. “It’s an ongoing evolutionary arms race.”
brief topics or news or something. just wanted to point it out. everyone knows i try to stay out of science topics.

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Message 2 of 9 (448154)
01-12-2008 9:46 AM


Thread moved here from the Proposed New Topics forum.

  
Granny Magda
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Message 3 of 9 (448225)
01-12-2008 4:21 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by macaroniandcheese
01-07-2008 3:56 PM


Hi Brenna,
There are quite a few species that exhibit this kind of behaviour. It is common amongst the blue butterflies, just one reason why they are threatened. Apparently it is called myrmecophily (thank god for the wiki). Here is an even weirder critter;
Link to image (asks for password)
Site the excerpt is taken from
quote:
British oil beetles; so called because of the oil they secrete from their joints to deter predators, have one of the most extraordinary life cycles of any British insect. A female adult oil beetle burrows in sandy areas close to a solitary bee colony. Within the burrow she will lay about 1000 eggs which take one year to develop. Once hatched the larvae are very active and louse like, and for good reason. In order to survive and reach maturity they must immediately find a bee and hitch a ride on its back. To have the best chance of meeting a bee the larvae climb up flower stems often lying in wait within a flower itself. A bee collecting pollen for its own nest, may unwittingly become covered in the oil beetle larvae, secured by their specially-adapted hooked feet. Once in the bee's nest the larva disembarks and set about eating the bee's eggs. Following this meal, the oil beetle larva develops into a more regular grub like stage which then consumes the stored pollen. The larvae pupate within the bee nest until the following year, when they emerge as adult oil beetles ready to mate and start the whole cycle again.
Now that is just bizarre. I would imagine that a similar "arms race" could be detected in this set-up as well.
Edited by AdminNWR, : changed image to link (since it asks for password)
Edited by AdminModulous, : added a link to the site the excerpt comes from, since they don't seem to like direct linking to their images.

Mutate and Survive

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jar
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Message 4 of 9 (448227)
01-12-2008 4:24 PM
Reply to: Message 3 by Granny Magda
01-12-2008 4:21 PM


Your buglife link is issuing login requests

Anyone so limited that they can only spell a word one way is severely handicapped!

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AdminNWR
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Message 5 of 9 (448229)
01-12-2008 4:28 PM
Reply to: Message 4 by jar
01-12-2008 4:24 PM


Your buglife link is issuing login requests
Fixed.
Notes (added in edit):
Originally, just clicking on this page resulted two password prompts (with firefox). I changed the image to a link, because viewing an evcforum page should not require a "buglife.org.uk" password.
AdminModulous then kindly added a link to the page at buglife. The image is on that page. After viewing that page, you can then directly click on the link for the image (in case you didn't work out what it was). It should now work, because your browser will be getting the image from your browser cache instead of from the buglife site.
Edited by AdminNWR, : added notes


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Granny Magda
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Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 6 of 9 (448233)
01-12-2008 4:56 PM
Reply to: Message 5 by AdminNWR
01-12-2008 4:28 PM


Cheers for sorting that out guys.

Mutate and Survive

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Granny Magda
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Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 7 of 9 (448256)
01-12-2008 6:42 PM
Reply to: Message 1 by macaroniandcheese
01-07-2008 3:56 PM


Here is a great excerpt from "Life in the Undergrowth", presented by the peerless David Attenborough. It talks about alcon blues, and their relationship with ants. It then goes on to describe the activities of another ant-nest interloper; an ichneumon wasp, one of the same insects that so disturbed Darwin. Things start to get a bit nasty about half way through...
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mb3OQPT3qbU
(Hope this link works!)

Mutate and Survive

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macaroniandcheese 
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Message 8 of 9 (450261)
01-21-2008 12:42 PM


NEW ANT VICTIMIZATION
Parasites Morph Ants to Look 'Berry' Tasty
this parasite changes the ant's physiology to look more attractive to birds, the main transporter of the parasite eggs.

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Granny Magda
Member
Posts: 2462
From: UK
Joined: 11-12-2007
Member Rating: 4.0


Message 9 of 9 (450444)
01-21-2008 10:05 PM
Reply to: Message 8 by macaroniandcheese
01-21-2008 12:42 PM


Re: NEW ANT VICTIMIZATION
Oh, that is seriously nasty. The bit about parasites causing the ants to climb up a blade of grass to await predation is especially creepy; cordyceps fungi do a similar thing.
Wikipedia writes:
Some Cordyceps species are able to affect the behavior of their insect host; Cordyceps unilateralis for instance causes ants to climb a plant and attach there before they die, assuring maximal distribution of the spores from the fruiting body that sprouts out of the dead insect's body.
Yuck. Reminds me of a David Cronenberg movie.

Mutate and Survive

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