by Stephanie
Pappas, Live Science Contributor | April 19, 2016
07:34am ET
It's weird enough that some ant
species can work together to build living rafts in the event of a flood. Now,
researchers find that individual ants have assigned seats on these life rafts —
and they remember them again and again.
The floodplain-dwelling Alpine
silver ants (Forica selysi) cluster together when the waters rise, creating a
living life boat that surrounds
and protects the colony's queen. Fire
ant species make similar rafts, clinging to one another with their jaws,
claws and sticky leg pads. Researchers call this process
"self-assembly."
To understand how Alpine silver
ants pull off this remarkably cooperative feat, researchers at the University
of California, Riverside, and the University of Lausanne in Switzerland marked
the abdomens of ants with different colors of paint. They then subjected the
insects to mock floods and video-recorded them swarming into floating masses.
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