Black garden ants take steps to stop diseases spreading through the colony
Leonid Serebrennikov / Alamy
When ants have been exposed to a pathogen, they change the way they build their nests in order to reduce the risk of an epidemic.
Nathalie Stroeymeyt at the University of Bristol in the UK and her colleagues demonstrated this by putting groups of 180 black garden ants (Lasius niger), along with larvae and pupae, in containers of soil and monitoring their nest building. Cameras recorded their surface activity while regular CT scans revealed the shape of the nests they excavated within the soil.…