I was wondering if someone would pick up on that! Practically speaking, I'd think they couldn't live past the age of a queen, but nobody has checked.
It's a hard experiment to run, though. It'd be difficult to revert them back to being a pseudoqueen, because presumably they'd have to go through a dueling process again, unless we figure out some way to induce them into pseudoqueen transition chemically.
Also, reverting from pseudoqueen back to worker is stressful. Their fellow ants "police" them as they revert, physically holding them in their jaws. This may actually be a causal event for their reversion. Regardless, it's a stressful enough event that it slightly lowers average lifespan of all the ants in the colony (217 days in normal colonies, ~185 days for all ants in a colony with reversion). That might be too much stress to go through more than once.
“That is, they then have about 200 days to live from the time of their reversion, regardless of how long they’ve lived as a pseudoqueen.”
Wait, so they could live forever if you just keep switching them from queen to worker and back?
I was wondering if someone would pick up on that! Practically speaking, I'd think they couldn't live past the age of a queen, but nobody has checked.
It's a hard experiment to run, though. It'd be difficult to revert them back to being a pseudoqueen, because presumably they'd have to go through a dueling process again, unless we figure out some way to induce them into pseudoqueen transition chemically.
Also, reverting from pseudoqueen back to worker is stressful. Their fellow ants "police" them as they revert, physically holding them in their jaws. This may actually be a causal event for their reversion. Regardless, it's a stressful enough event that it slightly lowers average lifespan of all the ants in the colony (217 days in normal colonies, ~185 days for all ants in a colony with reversion). That might be too much stress to go through more than once.
Fascinating