A right royal case of corruptionPrepare yourself, dear reader, for a tale of cheating and corruption that goes right to the top of the royal family. The scandal was uncovered thanks to some DNA detective work by Danish and British scientists.
The discovery is all the more shocking when one considers where this hotbed of lies and deception was found: not in a human royal family (where such things might be expected), but in ants, who always seemed to have such a cooperative society.
Until now, it was thought that all female ant larvae had an equal chance of being selected for the special diet which would turn them into queens. However, the scientists’ findings suggest that some parent ants have managed to rig this natural lottery to benefit their own offspring, to the detriment of others.
‘We carried out DNA fingerprinting on five colonies of leaf-cutting ants and discovered that the offspring of some fathers are more likely to become queens than others,’ said Dr Bill Hughes of the University of Leeds in the UK. ‘These ants have a ‘royal’ gene or genes, giving them an unfair advantage and enabling them to cheat many of their altruistic sisters out of their chance to become a queen themselves.’
Furthermore, these dynastically-minded fathers are careful to spread their royal genes across several colonies to ensure the ‘commoner’ ants don’t notice what is going on.
‘If there were too many of one genetic line developing into queens in a single colony, the other ants would notice and might take action against them,’ explained Dr Hughes.
Sadly Dr Hughes does not speculate on the form of action the ants might take, although
CORDIS Express likes to think it would involve the ants singing ‘We Shall Overcome’ outside the queen’s chamber and possibly also using their leaf-cutting skills to create protest banners saying things like ‘Equal rights for all larvae’. They could even form an organisation called ‘Against Non-equal Treatment of larvae’…
CORDIS Express, issue 277Estou no trabalho a passar-me com a burocracia e vim desopilar para aqui... :)
