Have you ever noticed an ant in your home, only to find that a week later the whole colony has moved in? The traps you set up catch only a few of these ants, but soon, the rest of the colony has mysteriously disappeared. Now, a study published in the journal Cell on June 14 explores how certain danger-signaling pheromones -- the scent markers ants emit to communicate with each other -- activate a specific part of the ants' brains and can change the behavior of an entire nest.

 

"Humans aren't the only animals with complex societies and communication systems," says lead author Taylor Hart of The Rockefeller University. "Over the course of evolution, ants have evolved extremely complex olfactory systems compared to other insects, which allows them to communicate using many different types of pheromones that can mean different things."

 

This research suggests that ants have their own kind of communication center in their brains, similar to humans. This center can interpret alarm pheromones, or "danger signals," from other ants. This section of their brain may be more advanced than that of some other insects such as honeybees, which prior work has suggested instead rely on many different parts of their brain to coordinate in response to a single pheromone.