Deceiving the Superorganism: Infiltration of Ant Societies by Stealth Beetles - Livestream

What allows a freeloading outsider to don a disguise and infiltrate a tight-knit society? Extreme evolution. By means of rapid and dramatic behavioral, anatomical, and chemical adaptations, a group of insects named rove beetles can assimilate into ant colonies - normally fiercely xenophobic - and exploit their social hosts undetected. This remarkable group of beetles, the most species-rich family in the animal kingdom, provides a paradigm for studying how interactions between species emerge during evolution.

Speaker: Joseph Parker, California Institute of Technology

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