Sick ants stay away from the kids

They stay out, at work, to protect everyone in the nest from infection.


Ants are the poster children for eusociality. Each ant has a job, and each ant sticks to its job: the foragers forage, the workers work, the nurses nurse, the queen procreates. It has been assumed that this strict segregation of ant society into age-and-task groups could help prevent epidemics, but this assumption had never been tested. Finally, a group of scientists got together and figured out how to do the experiment using 22 colonies of Lasius niger, the common black garden ant.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2018...from-the-kids/