Indigenous Australians have long treasuredCamponotus inflatus , known as honey ants or honeypotants . The honey is valued not just for its sweet-smelling taste , but for its ability to cure wounding and sore throat . research worker tested the golden liquid , thinking they might find something like the singular antimicrobial properties ofManuka honey . Instead , they found something much stranger , and potentially far more valuable .
Ants in abrasive weather condition on four continent have acquire the same method acting to store gelt for tenacious periods between plant flowerings . Some worker pismire become effectively live pantry , stuffed by their sib with nectar and other sources of scratch until their belly become blow up with honey .
When times are grueling , the other ant get their kilocalorie by having these honey - up ants regurgitate their precious liquid sugar . It sounds bizarrely ineffective to us , as well as a little bit horrifying , but the technique must suit the environment well than the bees’honeycombsbecause several genera have evolve the same approach independently .
It’s hard to believe ants could even move with so much honey for so little size, which is probably why they pretty much don’t.Image Credit: Danny Ulrich
“ For our hoi polloi , honey emmet are more than just a food source . turn over for them is a very pleasurable agency of life , and a elbow room of impart the family together , ” Danny Ulrich , who is from the Tjupan language group , who runs honeypot ant circuit from Kalgoorlie , Australia , read in astatement .
Dr Kenya Fernandes andProfessor Dee Carterof the University of Sydney were intrigued by these claims and decide to screen the honey ’s activity . “ Our research read that king protea ant honey possesses a distinctive consequence that sets it asunder from other type of honey , ” Dr Fernandessaid .
The honey killsStaphylococcus aureus , better known as prosperous staphylococcus , the researchers find . A killer before antibiotics , golden staphylococcus has been a major adopter of antibiotic resistance , making it one of the most studied disease - have microbe . Nevertheless , honey ant honey is far from the first substance we have found in nature that affects gilded staphylococci , including some thatshow potentialagainst its insubordinate form . What is more remarkable is that the love appears harmless to a tidy sum of other bacteria .
“ This is extremely strange , ” Carter told IFLScience . “ We ’ve work for a long clock time on honeybee honey and some bacterium may be more or less susceptible , but generally if a case of honey works on one bacterium it will work on others . ” The honey also proved highly toxic to two filth fungi that might otherwise invade the ant nest , AspergillusandCryptococcus .
If you do n’t recognize what you ’re press , then a broad - spectrum bacterial - killer may be just the just the ticket – but our bodies depend on sizeable bacteria , especially in the gut . Having treatments that will leave good bacteria alone would be a major fillip .
“ We call up [ this specificity ] may have evolved so ants can keep a beneficial microbiome , ” Carter tot up .
Manuka dearest , made by ordinary bees that feed on New Zealand ’s Manuka tree diagram nectar , attract a high cost for its medicinal issue and scarceness , but love ant honey would be the real liquid gold . The ants live in such bad environments that honey yield is very modified . Carter told IFLScience it was a struggle to find enough for examination , even with Ulrich ’s help . “ I do n’t see potential for farming , ” Carter total . The pismire scrounge not only on ambrosia by on honeydew melon produced by aphids run on mulga trees . It ’s a complex ecosystem that would be surd to replicate at scale .
The only option , then , is to identify the compounds that give the love its medicinal effect and synthesise them . Not as romanticist perhaps as dear from the desert , but also not probable to send you broke for a single discussion .
Being force - feed until your body looks like it will burst sounds terribly fell , but Carter said it could also be the soft lance of the ant world . Safe underground from predators and the burn Australian Lord’s Day , she yell them the “ lounge tater of the ant world ” hang from their nest ' ceilings . No one has studied which role in the colony has the best life expectancy .
The study is published opened access in the journalPeerJ
