This is a bit simplistic, especially the last paragraph. There are quite a lot of examples of ants which aren't particularly related to each other cooperating [

This is a bit simplistic, especially the last paragraph. There are quite a lot of examples of ants which aren't particularly related to each other cooperating [1]. Probably the most common example is that colonies which have been around for a while and are stable often adopt new queens that turn up from outside. Then multiple queens are producing workers and you get a colony made of many distinct "families". There are even examples of nests consisting of ants from different species. Quoting from the article I referenced earlier > Ants engaged in parabiotic associations cooperate in a variety of ways including shared nest defense, trophallaxis, and communal use of trail pheromones. For example, “ant gardens” in the Neotropics (Davidson, 1988; Orivel et al., 1997) and in Asian rainforests (Kaufmann and Maschwitz, 2006; Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010) are often co-inhabited by species from the genera Crematogaster and Camponotus (along with a number of other genera) .... While brood chambers are kept separate, the rest of the colonies mix freely within the joint nest. In addition to sharing foraging trails to plant-based resources (Menzel et al., 2010), both species will defend the nest although larger Camponotus tend to exhibit the majority of the defensive behaviors (Menzel and Bluthgen, 2010). [1] https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.736757/full https://www.frontiersin.org/articles/10.3389/fevo.2021.73675...