Word: liebig
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: during 2000-2009
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
Earlier studies had shown that a queen that senses potential competition from another fertile female will chemically mark the pretender; that female will then be attacked by lower-ranking females. Biologists Jürgen Liebig and Adrian Smith of Arizona State University suspected that something similar might go on even without the queen's intervention and believed the answer might lie in scent chemicals called cuticular hydrocarbons...
Ants that are capable of reproducing naturally emit hydrocarbon-based odors, and the eggs they produce smell the same way. Ants that can't reproduce emit no such odor. Liebig and Smith produced a synthetic hydrocarbon in the lab that had the same olfactory properties as the natural one, then plucked a few innocent ants from a nest and dabbed the chemical on them. When they were returned to the colony, they were promptly attacked - never mind that they had essentially been framed...
...complex critters might be glad to be part of a species that's free of such Draconian sexual rules, but Liebig doesn't think it's wise to get above ourselves. All manner of lawsuits, divorces and blood feuds can erupt over people breeding when - or with whom - they oughtn't. Often, the methods used to expose the cheaters aren't terribly different from those of the ants: more than one philanderer, after all, has been exposed by a whiff of the wrong perfume on his clothes when he came home. "The idea that social harmony is dependent on strict...