Leaf-Cutter Ants Have Rocky Crystal Armor, Never Before Seen in Insects (nationalgeographic.com) 17
Leaf-cutter ants are named for their Herculean feats: they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies. There they chew up the leaves to feed underground fungus farms. Along the way, the insects brave all manner of predators -- and regularly engage in wars with other ants. But these insects are even tougher than previously thought. From a report: A new study shows that one Central American leaf-cutter ant species has natural armor that covers its exoskeleton. This shield-like coating is made of calcite with high levels of magnesium, a type found only in one other biological structure: sea urchin teeth, which can grind limestone. Bones and teeth of many animals contain calciferous minerals, and crustaceans, such as crabs and lobsters, have mineralized shells and other body parts. But before this finding, no type of calcite had been found in any adult insect.
In leaf-cutter ants, this coating is made of thousands of tiny, plate-like crystals that harden their exoskeleton. This "armor" helps prevent the insects from losing limbs in battles with other ants and staves off fungal infections, according to a paper published November 24 in the journal Nature Communications. The discovery is especially surprising because the ants are well known. "There are thousands of papers on leaf-cutter ants," says study co-author Cameron Currie, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We were really excited to find [this in] one of the most well-studied insects in nature," he says. Though this paper looked only at one species, Acromyrmex echinatior, Currie and colleagues suspect other related ants have the biomineral too.
In leaf-cutter ants, this coating is made of thousands of tiny, plate-like crystals that harden their exoskeleton. This "armor" helps prevent the insects from losing limbs in battles with other ants and staves off fungal infections, according to a paper published November 24 in the journal Nature Communications. The discovery is especially surprising because the ants are well known. "There are thousands of papers on leaf-cutter ants," says study co-author Cameron Currie, an evolutionary biologist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. "We were really excited to find [this in] one of the most well-studied insects in nature," he says. Though this paper looked only at one species, Acromyrmex echinatior, Currie and colleagues suspect other related ants have the biomineral too.
Re: (Score:1)
It has just as much to do with Marxism as most anything the right thinks is Marxism-related :-P
Re: Interesting but... (Score:2)
Did you fail English ? (Score:2)
"they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies"
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"they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies"
I'm not seeing the problem - it's just parenthetical commas, isn't it? Take the middle portion out and it makes a sentence, leave it in and it makes a sentence with a clause describing the pieces of foliage.
Re: (Score:1)
I can haz an po-Angleski?
Just because you're functionally illiterate doesn't mean the people who wrote the things you didn't parse were unskilled at English. Perhaps they didn't even try to optimize it to be parsed by idiots? Maybe they don't care about your special needs?
Good News Everyone (Score:5, Funny)
One thing is for certain: there is no stopping them; the ants will soon be here. And I, for one, welcome our new insect overlords. I'd like to remind them as a trusted IT personality, I can be helpful in rounding up others to toil in their underground sugar caves.
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Damn you, if only I hadn't been over four hours late I would have posted almost the same thing!
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Um, ants were here before you humans existed. Bow down to me as your overlord.
Right out of "children of Time" (Score:4, Interesting)
Re: (Score:3)
Even closer: In Chrysalis, the main character is an ant that mutates crystals/diamonds into his exoskeleton...
Chrysalis is by RinoZ and can be read for free: https://www.royalroad.com/fict... [royalroad.com]
Re:Why so late? (Score:5, Insightful)
For one of the most-studied ants, why wasn't this discovered earlier?
Here is a hint, two paragraphs from the actual paper:
Many species of fungus-growing ants are variably covered with a whitish granular coating, uniformly distributed on their otherwise dark brown cuticles34, including, in addition to Acromyrmex echinatior (Fig. 1a), some species of Trachymyrmex and Sericomyrmex.
Based on combined data from in situ X-ray diffraction (XRD), electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction (EBSD), quantitative electron probe micro-analysis (EPMA), and Raman and attenuated total reflectance Fourier-transform infrared (ATR-FTIR) spectroscopy, we report here that this coating is in fact a mineral layer covering the ant exoskeleton. The layer is composed of euhedral rhombohedral crystals with curved faces, 3–5m in size (Fig. 1b). To examine the mechanism of crystal growth, we conducted synchrotron X-ray PhotoEmission electron spectro-microscopy (X-PEEM), in vitro synthesis, and in vivo observation of crystallization and growth in an ant-rearing experiment.
Whitish granular coating noted many times before ("in vivo observation").
But the combined application of X-ray diffraction, electron microscopy, electron backscatter diffraction, quantitative electron probe micro-analysis, Raman and attenuated total reflectance, Fourier-transform infrared spectroscopy, and synchrotron X-ray PhotoEmission electron spectro-microscopy would be something accessible only recently to well funded researchers.
I am reminded of how fullerenes, nanotubes, and graphene have been present in materials studied in laboratories as long as they have been using carbon arcs in vacuums and inert atmospheres, but only when the appropriate analytical tools (mass spectometry of a suitably created stream) were deployed in the 1980s were they recognized.
Science copies nature (Score:2)
Ceramic plate body armor.
Stormtrooper Ants (Score:2)
Already prophesized [deviantart.com]
The ceramic ant armour is recent. (Score:1)
They only developed their ceramic coated armour after hearing about what was happening recently on the net to their relatives over at Food.com. [food.com] And only after their scientists extensively tested the genetic code on themselves against all forms of natural tooth enamel. Only very recently the genetic code to coat ants in ceramics was granted certification by their queens and her consorts as leaf cutter baby safe GMO code.
Commercial "minimg" potential (Score:2)
> This shield-like coating is made of calcite with high levels of magnesium
How woukd the economics of breeding and "refining" these ants compare to regular "hole-in-the-ground" magnesium mining?