A YOUNG pretender trying to overthrow the ruling elite is beaten up by hired thugs. It sounds like a scene from a gangster movie, but Brazilian ants appear to follow the same plot.
Female workers of the species Dinoponera quadriceps don’t differ from the top-ranking, reproducing female, or “gamergate”, in stature or appearance. So high-ranking workers sometimes challenge her. The stakes are high because the winner gets to mate.
Now Thibaud Monnin and colleagues at the University of Sheffield have shown that the gamergate marks her challenger with a secretion from her abdomen, prompting other workers to give the upstart…
