Ant Ecology Podcast Dolly Sallen

Ants use pheromones for more than just making trails. A crushed ant emits an alarm pheromone that sends nearby ants into an attack frenzy and attracts more ants from farther away. Several ant species even use "propaganda pheromones" to confuse enemy ants and make them fight among themselves.[73] Pheromones are produced by a wide range of structures including Dufour's glands, poison glands and glands on the hindgut, pygidium, rectum, sternum, and hind tibia.[60] Pheromones also are exchanged, mixed with food, and passed by trophallaxis, transferring information within the colony.[74] This allows other ants to detect what task group (e.g., foraging or nest maintenance) other colony members belong to.[75] In ant species with queen castes, when the dominant queen stops producing a specific pheromone, workers begin to raise new queens in the colony.