New Article About Egg Laying by Ant Queens

You might want to check out the Apr. 11 issue of the open access journal PLoS ONE. Scientist Juergen Heinze at the University of Regensburg in Germany found that Cardiocondyla obscurior ant queens lay more eggs as they get older (even with the same number of workers) and that this high egg-laying rate does not shorten the queens’ life spans, as would have been expected based on many other organisms.

Cardiocondyla obscurior photograph by April Nobile / © AntWeb.org / CC-BY-SA-3.0, downloaded from Wikimedia