Science News Desk – In animals with high fecundity and reproductive success, life expectancy is reduced. Organisms that produce more children have a shorter life span. But it has been observed that queen ants are an exception to this rule. The queen ant lives 10 to 30 times longer than her similar relatives who do not reproduce. To find out why, this study found that a special type of insulin blocker helps queen ants in this case. A new study from the University of Florida, led by experts from New York University, has shed new light on this phenomenon.
Professor Hua Yan found that queen ants use two mechanisms to control their insulin, which increases their fertility as well as their lifespan. Queen ants increase their insulin mostly for the development of eggs, their eggs also produce an insulin inhibitor which slows down their aging process. Professor Yan, who also studies how ants communicate to understand the organization of societies, says this study can be expected to help understand the aging process of many animals.
But whether such a process could be beneficial in humans and other mammals, or whether partial inhibition of insulin could extend lifespan are big questions. Similarly, in humans, insulin production can be stopped by restricting the production of calories, but it still has an effect on reproduction. The researchers focused their study on Harpagnathoth saltator ants, also known as the Indian jumping ant. Is. When the queen ant of this species dies, there is a struggle between the worker ants to become the queen ant and then the new queen ant lives a long life (aging).
But that changes when the original queen ant replaces her. The researchers tried to figure out how the aging mechanism is turned off and on, and they found that ants who temporarily became queen ants produced a lot more insulin. Hai Professor Yan explains that temporary ants have reproductive capacity, so they also need insulin, yet why they have a long life span was a big question.