The results of a multi-institution study in 2015 of whether ant behavior could be modified chemically has been summarized by researchers at the University of Pennsylvania School of Medicine:
In Florida carpenter ant colonies, distinct worker castes called minors and majors exhibit pronounced differences in social behavior throughout their lives. In a new study, a multi-institution team found that these caste-specific behaviors are not set in stone. Rather, this pioneering study shows that social behavior can be reprogrammed, indicating that an individual’s epigenetic, not genetic, makeup determines behavior in ant colonies.
You will find a lengthy article examining the details of this study at the source of our extract: Sciencedaily.com.
Another source, inverse.com, summarized the basics of the study thusly:
The team of researchers behind this recent study realized that through epigenetics they could change the behavior of ants — specifically, major ants (the soldiers) and minor ants (the foragers.) While these ants share the same genes, whether they act like a major or a minor ant is determined by which genes are turned on and off. So, the researchers treated the brains of young majors with a compound that modifies the proteins that affect whether other proteins can access DNA and how tightly DNA is coiled. This process allowed them to turn on the genes linked to the foraging behaviors of minors in the bodies of the majors.
The research team was only able to modify the behaviors of ants in their first few days of life — a factor thought to be caused by the plasticity of young brains — but the majors treated to act like minors continued to display the changed behavior for 30 to 50 days after the injection treatment. The ant’s physicality were not affected by the experiment.
Image: By Jonathan Reiskind, in: Psyche 72:279-281 – http://psyche2.entclub.org/articles/72/72-279.pdf (p.280), Public Domain, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=1055412
