Becoming a leader by Barbora Misakova

Probably every one of us wanted to be (at least once in a life) a boss. Doesn't matter if he wanted to be a leader of some bicycle gang, chess club or just some small girlish group. But desire is one thing and reality another. Some of us not only long for this kind of power, but they also got it. Maybe because of their ability to lead other people, because of their ability of speech, maybe they were just very popular or handsome – the point is that leader should be admired for some reason which makes him a boss. Now imagine that your social status could be influenced not only by nature and things you just inherited from your parents, but also by nurture – the things you are eating. Imagine that the food you are eating while you are young could influence your future and your social status. If you now started to think about all kinds of food you had ever eaten, don't worry – this discovery has no connection with human kind! Researchers studying Florida harvester ants led by biologist Andrew Suarez found out, that future of ant is determined by nature as well as by nurture.
While for males there is only one social life consisted of “doing nothing, just mate and die”, for females there are “three social endpoints” said Smith, a former graduate student at the University of Illinois and postdoctoral researcher at Arizona State University. Females can be destined to become queen, major or minor workers. Gynes, as the queen ant is also called, is always the biggest one in the whole ant colony. Scientist were working with eight different ant colonies and testing about 1,200 ants. Except investigating the role of nutrition in determining social status, they also found out that offspring of some fathers were more likely to become gynes than descendants of other males. Biologists were also analyzing the diet of ants when they are in a stage of becoming adults from larvae. The results showed that those ants which had eaten a more carnivorous diet had higher nitrogen content and so they were eating higher on the food chain than major and minor workers. Even though the results are pointing at importance of both nature and nurture, there still some questions remain. One of them is how exactly these two factors work – is it a nature or nurture what can influence social status more, or is it a combination of both factors what determines if the ant is going to be a queen or worker?

related story: http://news.yahoo.com/s/livescience/20080819/sc_livescience/keystoantsocialstatusfound;_ylt=AlNIVeFRtuMdYXsuQyATW4ms0NUE

by Barbora Misakova for PocketNews (http://pocketnews.tv)

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posted by Lucia Adamova