The genetic code of Argentine ants - the kind you will often catch invading your kitchen bench top or picnic rug - has been unlocked, in the hopes that researchers can figure out a way to keep these highly invasive species in check.
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WASHINGTON: The genetic code of the Argentine ant has been unlocked by scientists in the U.S., providing clues as to why the highly invasive species has such acute senses and a built-in genetic shield against harmful substances.
Knowing more about how the South American species operate may help eradicate the larger threats they pose to crops and native species, said the study in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"The Argentine ant is a species of special concern because of its enormous ecological impact," said co-author Neil Tsutsui, associate professor at UC Berkeley's Department of Environmental Science in California. "When the Argentine ants invade, they devastate the native insect communities while promoting the population growth of agricultural pests," said Tsutsui.
Double the honeybee’s smell capacity
"This genome map will provide a huge resource for people interested in finding effective, targeted ways of controlling the Argentine ant."
The genome project showed that Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) have a whopping 367 sensory receptors for odour and 116 for taste, more than double the honeybee's capacity for smell and almost well above the mosquito's 76 taste sensors.
"Ants are ground-dwellers, walking along trails, and for many, living most of their lives in the dark, so it makes sense that they would have developed keen senses of smell and taste," said Tsutsui, who also co-authored two other papers on the genomes of the red harvester (Pogonomyrmex barbatus) and leaf-cutter ants (Atta cephalotes).
Switching between worker and queen genomes
The ants also appear to have adapted to the variety of poisons they may encounter in their diet by developing "a large number of cytochrome P450 genes, which are important in detoxifying harmful substances," the study said. "Argentine ants have 111 such genes, while European honeybees, in comparison, have 46."
While the Argentine ants may excel beyond the honeybee in some aspects, in social ways the two are rather similar, each with a dominant queen who is responsible for reproduction in the colony and workers who hunt for food.
"We now know that ants have the genes and genome signature of DNA methylation - the same molecular mechanism that published honeybee studies have shown is responsible for switching whether the genome is read to be a worker or queen," said Christopher Smith, assistant professor of biology at San Francisco State University, an author on three of the four genome studies.
