Ants brewing Antibiotic 

/in /by

Wood ants protect their ant colonies from disease by creating a strong antibiotic concoction made of tree resin and poison from their own bodies. Ants have all sorts of jobs, from guard to queen and forager to chemist. Now we know that there is an ant pharmacology helping ants evade epidemics. Ants live in colonies numbering in the thousands, nests that are warm, humid, and full of dead insects and this should make them vulnerable to disease. They avoid most epidemics by relentlessly cleaning each other and compulsively cleaning their nests, and now it is learned that wood ants collect antimicrobial tree resin to help their colonies. By mixing this resin with formic acid (a caustic substance produced by several ant species to fight off threats, subdue prey, and clean their offspring) the resulting mixture helps to ward off fungus. This is the same synergistic effects or defensive mixology that we humans use in our drug cocktails.

https://www.linkedin.com/pulse/ants-brewing-antibiotic-randy-bilesky?published=t

gogreenpestcontrol.ca Ladner Tsawwassen Delta Bilesky

http://www.delta-optimist.com/opinion/blogs/blog-ants-brewing-antibiotic-1.12012828