I can understand them all walking in a line to and from food sources and their nests…but the specialized roles of “guards” and “warriors” which involve more strategic patterns blows my mind.
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Ant worker roles change throughout their lives. Young ants start as nursery workers and older ants end up in roles such as foraging and guarding. This is a common theme in social insects such as bees. It is usually the oldest worker ants you see out and about. If something were to happen to the nursery, the worker ants can adjust to work in the nursery again to help raise more workers. Pheromones play a huge role in all of this and there is little individual thought each ant has about its role.
In ant species with the special majors and minors, the colony is able to control how many of each are needed by controlling the diet of the larvae.
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