These two new ant species have been named after the Game of Thrones dragons for its close resemblance. With spikes poking up from their backs, the scientists thought the insects resemble the dragons so the two new species have been dubbed Pheidole drogon and Pheidole viserion. The discovery was published Wednesday in the journal PLUS ONE.
The study's author, Eli Sarnat, tells The Christian Science Monitor that the idea of having these spines are to defend themselves against predation in a very unusual way. The ant's sharp, sometimes curved spines can get hooked in the throats of birds, frogs, or other reptiles trying to eat them.
But Sarnat has another theory. Based on ant's 'castes' which are divided into two: major and minor workers, the majors, which appeared to have oversized heads to support their large mandibles, may have developed more muscles that could help support their heads.
To test their theory, the team used micro CT to scan the ants to peek at the internal structure of their bodies without having to dissect them. Using the scans, they made a 3-D model of the ants to take a closer look.
They needed muscle tissue in all the spines on both the major and minor workers to backup their theory.
Sure enough, the scans revealed muscle tissue in just the shoulder spines of the major workers. But that doesn't mean that the spines aren't valuable defense mechanism today.
As for the naming of these little critters, Sarnat turned to his wife for some help. They looked up Latin words that might fit and she initially suggested a name that meant something like "split thorns." But when he took the name to his colleagues, they thought such weird looking ants deserved "a more standout name."
Evan Economo, another member of the research team, "who is deep into the Game of Thrones series," suggested naming one of the ants "drogon."
The name totally fits since the species is jet black and some of the spines resemble a wing and the shoulder spines look somewhat like a claw.
If the black one is "drogon", then the gold one has to be "viserion" because of the coloration of the two fictional dragons, Drogon and Viserion.
Source: The Christian Science Monitor
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