{"id":73199,"date":"2024-06-14T18:31:13","date_gmt":"2024-06-14T18:31:13","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/14\/early-ants-may-have-had-complex-social-lives-fossil-data-suggests\/"},"modified":"2024-06-14T18:31:13","modified_gmt":"2024-06-14T18:31:13","slug":"early-ants-may-have-had-complex-social-lives-fossil-data-suggests","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/news.talkwithrattan.com\/index.php\/2024\/06\/14\/early-ants-may-have-had-complex-social-lives-fossil-data-suggests\/","title":{"rendered":"Early ants may have had complex social lives, fossil data suggests"},"content":{"rendered":"
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Even the earliest ants may have been social butterflies.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Ants fossilized in 100-million-year-old amber have sensory equipment that suggests they had complex social lives similar to their modern-day ancestors<\/a>, researchers report June 14 in Science Advances<\/em>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

All ants live in advanced societies where adults live in large groups and engage in cooperative parenting and divisions of labor, but ants\u2019 ancestors were solitary wasps. Researchers aren\u2019t sure when the insects\u2019 social lifestyle evolved. Some early ants have been found fossilized as groups, which hinted at social living around the time of the insects\u2019 evolution during the Early Cretaceous Period. But it was still unknown if early ants chemically communicated with each other as colony members or simply shared their habitats.<\/p>\n\n\n