Air pollution distracts insects from pollination and sex

While an ant entering a foreign colony would be usually killed, the attacks toward the nestmates in the experiment were usually not deadly. Still, “if every time when you come back, you become attacked and have to deal with it for five or 10 minutes,” that might be enough to “mess up the whole structure of the colony,” says Markus Knaden, an animal behavior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology and study co-author.

The team also found out that in the case of the clonal raider ant, the only species where the nestmates didn’t attack each other in reaction to ozone, the pollutant affected the insects in another, subtle way. This species use odors to define tasks in the colony. Larvae, for example, are known to ask for food using a partially chemically based communication, says Knaden. But in an experiment involving increased levels of ozone, the ant stopped taking care of the larvae —possibly because that communication channel got somehow disrupted.

“The impact is relatively minor on the pheromones that these ants are producing, but it’s having a really big behavioral impact,” says Riffell, who wasn’t involved in the study.

Knaden and his team believe their results can apply to many other species of ants, especially those that are active during the day, when ozone levels are higher, and to species that doesn’t build nests underground, but for example on trees, where they are more exposed to air pollutants.

(Beetles steal the scent of ants to secretly live among them)