• Fuller/VWPics/Alamy Jon G. • Fuller/VWPics/Alamy Pollution is making many cities unlivable for their human inhabitants, but it is also tearing ant families and communities apart. • Ants recognise each other by sniffing a thin layer of hydrocarbons on the outside of their exoskeletons; each colony has a specific “smell”. • But a newstudyreveals that ozone emissions can change the structure of these hydrocarbons. • After ants wander around in relatively typical urban air with 100 parts per billion of ozone, their nestmates no longer perceive them as allies. • Some are attacked by their own families.
Article Summaries:
- A new study shows that ozone pollution can alter the thin layer of hydrocarbons ants use to recognize nestmates, causing members of the same colony to mistake each other for outsiders. In urban air containing about 100 parts per billion of ozone, ants may be attacked by their own colony or left to neglect larvae, threatening the survival of the species. The research highlights the dangers of anthropomorphising ants-projecting human family dynamics onto insect societies-and underscores a broader debate in biology. While early sociobiologists like E. O. Wilson used ants to illustrate human social evolution, contemporary work by Stanford’s Deborah Gordon frames ant behaviour as algorithmic, likening their distributed signalling to computer networks rather than human hierarchies.
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