Cuticle evolution and colony size

We have a new paper in Science Advances that traces the evolution of cuticle investment across the ants. We show that reduced cuticle investment is correlated with colony size, which we argue reflects a quality vs. quantity tradeoff in worker armament. The paper was led by the amazing former OIST intern (now Cambridge grad student), Arthur Matte. Check out the article in the nytimes.

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Ant stinger simplification