I have a new queen. Lasius brevicornis. The queen is about 9mm Her nanitics are so tiny I'm going to cry. They are 1.5mm and transparent yellow.
They are smaller than the antennae on my Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen. Nanitics are the first workers in a colony and they are often smaller than the workers produced later when the colony is better established. But this is out of control. They are just so small.
They would make a fruit fly look like an elephant.
They still have six legs, tiny mandibles and tiny ant intentions and projects they are working on with their mother.
What do they have in their legs? One muscle fiber per joint?
They are so complex and tiny it's breaking my brain a little.
I don't understand why people aren't freaked about about this more often.
They dig and maintain the nest.
They forage for food and lay trails.
They defend each other and the queen from threats.
They find and farm scale insects for nectar.
They stop and greet each other and check if anyone who wants to enter is from the colony.
So much complexity and you have one of the smallest ant brains. They do vary in size a lot, and ants have relatively large brains for their size as insects (bees do too)
But when you look at the smallest ants it's kind of shocking.
when you look at the smallest ants it's kind of shocking.
truly, the amount of complex behaviour that can be driven by a large-enough genome but very few neurons is extraordinary.
How much "thinking" have they pushed out of neurons? Eg. colonymate/stranger smelling, how much is in the receptors themselves? And so on.
I found another neat graphic of the size of ant brains in various sized ants.
@futurebird there was that paper with maybe 2x the volume difference in brain size between sibling clonal ants
thinking too of the headline about ant caste by brain chemistry, not structure
myrmepropagandist
Eric Brombaugh
datum (n=1)