I don’t know. I think queens have wings, so I presumed they flew off to kill a new ant nest, but maybe they split the nest or maybe there is some in-fighting. A good question for ant-biologists.

Yeah, as the researchers point out the monkeys snatching bats is particularly worrying. I wonder if vaccinating not only the bats but also their predators would help prevent zoonotic spillover. In particular, I wonder if vaccinating them against viruses targeting other species they’re interacting with would help.

Vibes say these are more ant-parasites than parasite-ants, but they’re pretty interesting regardless. I was hoping to read about a clonal super-organism, but it seems like these supplant existing ant-queens, so I presume they are less collectivist than I was hoping. Still pretty cool.

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I find the idea of “biological wires” particularly interesting; though, I doubt they work quite like normal wires.