How to become 'ant-i-social'

(Arizona State University) In the insect world, there are rare instances of ants shrugging off their societal duties to become free-loading parasites amongst their free-living relatives. Now, in a new study, an international collaboration of researchers teamed up to discover and collect these rare ant social parasites. Together, for the first time, they have obtained and analyzed the full DNA genome sequences of three rare " social parasite " leaf-cutting ant species (called Acromyrmex inquilines) to better understand the differences between them and their respective host species.
Source: EurekAlert! - Biology - Category: Biology Source Type: news