The Caterpillar's Song: how the larvae of Alcon Blue butterfly convince ants to become their caretakershttp://blogs.biomedcentral.com/bugbitten/2014/04/18/butterflies-behaving-like-cuckoos-2/ …
@The_Episiarch "The ants will feed the adopted larvae in preference to their own, & the ant colony will produce fewer offspring." Amazing!
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@OtherSociology Yes, funnily enough the caterpillar actually mimics the sound of the queen ant http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19197065 which means the (1/2)Thanks. Twitter will use this to make your timeline better. UndoUndo
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@OtherSociology workers will actually drop everything to attend to those caterpillars as the highest priority! (2/2) -
@The_Episiarch Not knowing much on social insects other than ants & bees I wouldn't have thought about butterflies in this way. Great stuff! -
@OtherSociology two more astonishing things - bc ants are so successful, there are many spp. that have evolved to be such resident of (1)
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