3 ms·

How Insulin Helped Create Ant Societies

34 points by digital55 8y ago

Nasrudith 8y ago
Hmm interesting, I always thought queens were the result of a "mutant" highjacking the means of reproduction to "spay" the other insects leading to survival cooperation of others and the arrangement being so advantageous that the original largely died out along with any "resistant" strains which were either unaffected or reacted by trying to kill the queen. Insects are apparently easy to puppet relatively speaking given cordyceps. I suppose insulin works as a reproductive feedback loop if it rises from sufficient food reproduce to offload excessive nutrients. If lower care for existing genetic investments and go gather more food, lacking the first part would be a r-strategy probably doomed to fail.
kuwze 8y ago
Edit: apparently this is b.s. On an unrelated note, I recently found out that ants pass the mirror test[0]. Is that weird or what? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Insects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Insects
- nervousvarun 8y ago
  Disclaimer: Woefully ignorant here in cognitive sciences but the mirror test has always seemed ambiguous to me. How do they determine that the animal is not just...well apathetic about seeing themselves in a mirror? For worthless anecdotal example my dog (and per that link dogs don't pass this test at least officially) when she was a puppy did react to the mirror but now never does as an adult. Why does that not just mean she's...well not particularly vain? Edit: Just saw the extensive section in your wiki link on "false-negatives"...which is my entire post so...it's a thing after all.
- notafraudster 8y ago
  This may well be true -- I clicked with enthusiasm because this would interest me a lot -- but if you follow the link you'll see that the married authors of the "study" have a history of making nonsense claims (she has two separate nonsense Wifi studies, which you'll see a bunch if you Google). The study itself was published in a pay-to-publish journal with no peer review. I read the paper. The design, as listed in the paper, seems fine. The main rival hypothesis for me would be that the ants do see the mirror, don't think it's themselves or pass the mirror test, and scratch because they're bothered by the marking on their face which they can feel. But the authors do claim to test this and find that ants not exposed to mirrors don't scratch their faces. So to be clear the threat I'm proposing to the study's validity is fraud on the part of the authors, not a failed execution.
  - kuwze 8y ago
    Ugh I knew I should have done more research into it. Thanks for finding that out.
    - notafraudster 8y ago
      No problem. I hope someone replicates the substantive result in a less tainted way!
vinceguidry 8y ago
A Quora answer pointed out something to me, I'd pull it up but Quora makes it really hard to search through your previous upvotes, something that people regularly miss about ants. The worker's stomachs is separated from their mouths by a very, very small opening. Meaning they can't eat solid food. Instead they chew it and regurgitate it so the larvaes, who don't have such a constricting path to their stomachs, can finish digesting it. Worker ants eat the liquid waste of the larvae. So there's a body-morphological explanation for eusociality.

34 points by digital55 8y ago

Hmm interesting, I always thought queens were the result of a "mutant" highjacking the means of reproduction to "spay" the other insects leading to survival cooperation of others and the arrangement being so advantageous that the original largely died out along with any "resistant" strains which were either unaffected or reacted by trying to kill the queen. Insects are apparently easy to puppet relatively speaking given cordyceps. I suppose insulin works as a reproductive feedback loop if it rises from sufficient food reproduce to offload excessive nutrients. If lower care for existing genetic investments and go gather more food, lacking the first part would be a r-strategy probably doomed to fail.

kuwze 8y ago

Edit: apparently this is b.s. On an unrelated note, I recently found out that ants pass the mirror test[0]. Is that weird or what? [0]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Insects https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mirror_test#Insects

nervousvarun 8y ago
Disclaimer: Woefully ignorant here in cognitive sciences but the mirror test has always seemed ambiguous to me. How do they determine that the animal is not just...well apathetic about seeing themselves in a mirror? For worthless anecdotal example my dog (and per that link dogs don't pass this test at least officially) when she was a puppy did react to the mirror but now never does as an adult. Why does that not just mean she's...well not particularly vain? Edit: Just saw the extensive section in your wiki link on "false-negatives"...which is my entire post so...it's a thing after all.
notafraudster 8y ago
This may well be true -- I clicked with enthusiasm because this would interest me a lot -- but if you follow the link you'll see that the married authors of the "study" have a history of making nonsense claims (she has two separate nonsense Wifi studies, which you'll see a bunch if you Google). The study itself was published in a pay-to-publish journal with no peer review. I read the paper. The design, as listed in the paper, seems fine. The main rival hypothesis for me would be that the ants do see the mirror, don't think it's themselves or pass the mirror test, and scratch because they're bothered by the marking on their face which they can feel. But the authors do claim to test this and find that ants not exposed to mirrors don't scratch their faces. So to be clear the threat I'm proposing to the study's validity is fraud on the part of the authors, not a failed execution.
- kuwze 8y ago
  Ugh I knew I should have done more research into it. Thanks for finding that out.
  - notafraudster 8y ago
    No problem. I hope someone replicates the substantive result in a less tainted way!

vinceguidry 8y ago

A Quora answer pointed out something to me, I'd pull it up but Quora makes it really hard to search through your previous upvotes, something that people regularly miss about ants. The worker's stomachs is separated from their mouths by a very, very small opening. Meaning they can't eat solid food. Instead they chew it and regurgitate it so the larvaes, who don't have such a constricting path to their stomachs, can finish digesting it. Worker ants eat the liquid waste of the larvae. So there's a body-morphological explanation for eusociality.