{"id":911,"date":"2026-05-09T09:25:46","date_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:25:46","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/crafty-caterpillars-trick-ants-into-treating-them-as-queens\/"},"modified":"2026-05-09T09:25:47","modified_gmt":"2026-05-09T08:25:47","slug":"crafty-caterpillars-trick-ants-into-treating-them-as-queens","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/crafty-caterpillars-trick-ants-into-treating-them-as-queens\/","title":{"rendered":"Crafty Caterpillars Trick Ants Into Treating Them as Queens"},"content":{"rendered":"
<\/figure>\n

Protected, fed and carried by the workers. Thanks to astonishing mimicry, young caterpillars benefit from royal treatment by ant colonies, essential to their development.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Royal Treatment<\/strong><\/h2>\n

The caterpillars<\/strong> of many butterfly species are \u201cmyrmecophilous<\/em>\u201d: their life cycle is tightly dependent on the ants<\/strong>. They can be parasitic or mutualistic; this relationship relies on the caterpillars\u2019 ability to decode and use the host colony\u2019s \u201clanguage.\u201d While the role of chemical and acoustic signals is well documented, Francesca Barbero of the University of Turin and her colleagues have made intriguing new discoveries.<\/p>\n

Lire aussi<\/span> Priv\u00e9 de la moiti\u00e9 de son bec, ce perroquet n\u00e9o-z\u00e9landais a fait de son handicap une v\u00e9ritable force<\/span><\/section>\n

Using a highly sensitive experimental device, the team recorded the vibrations produced by the queen ants of the genus Myrmica<\/em>, as well as those of the larvae and pupae of nine butterfly species exhibiting different degrees of myrmecophily.<\/p>\n

For all the species studied, the researchers identified a form of isochrony, or regular rhythm. But it turned out that among caterpillars most closely dependent on ants, the \u201crhythmic patterns\u201d were of an unprecedented complexity for insects, comparable to the structure of vocal calls in certain primates.<\/p>\n

\u201cThanks to these rhythmic patterns, species highly dependent on ants, such as Phengaris alcon and Plebejus argus, manage to convince the workers that they require the same attention as their queen<\/em>,\u201d comments James Mallet of Harvard University. \u201cIn these two cases, it is a form of parasitism, with caterpillars feeding on the ants\u2019 larvae<\/em>.\u201d<\/p>\n

Lire aussi<\/span> Deux papillons d\u2019Amazonie partagent un m\u00eame signal rouge, et leur ADN raconte le trajet pr\u00e9cis de ce motif au P\u00e9rou<\/span><\/section>\n
\"\"<\/figure>\n

Des signaux confondants mais moins fr\u00e9quents<\/strong><\/h2>\n

Aussi confondantes soient les imitations des signaux rythmiques des reines fourmis, les chenilles les \u00e9mettaient \u00e0 une fr\u00e9quence nettement moindre, que Barbero lie potentiellement \u00e0 leur co\u00fbt \u00e9nerg\u00e9tique \u00e9lev\u00e9.<\/p>\n

\u00ab \u00catre plus silencieux peut \u00eatre profitable pour le futur papillon, qui \u00e9met ces signaux uniquement lorsqu\u2019il a besoin de l\u2019attention des fourmis<\/em> \u00bb, concluent les auteurs de la nouvelle \u00e9tude, publi\u00e9e dans les Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences<\/em>.<\/p>\n

Plus t\u00f4t cette ann\u00e9e, des chercheurs avaient d\u00e9crit une forme de \u00ab guerre chimique \u00bb chez les fourmis, avec des insectes parasites incitant les ouvri\u00e8res \u00e0 tuer leur reine, puis usurpant sa place.<\/p>\n

Lire aussi<\/span> Des cam\u00e9ras infrarouges plong\u00e9es \u00e0 240 m\u00e8tres r\u00e9v\u00e8lent des comportements marins encore jamais observ\u00e9s en Indon\u00e9sie<\/span><\/section>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":912,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[347,1214,1213,348,1215,472],"class_list":["post-911","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-ants","tag-caterpillars","tag-crafty","tag-queens","tag-treating","tag-trick","generate-columns","tablet-grid-50","mobile-grid-100","grid-parent","grid-50"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=911"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":913,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/911\/revisions\/913"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/912"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=911"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=911"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.farmersforum.ie\/trends\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=911"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}