In turn, the ant consumes substances produced by the fungus that it couldn't obtain from any other source. It's as if the fungus were the insect's external stomach," says the researcher ...

An ultrablack substance is defined as a material ... they found that the cuticle reflectance of the female velvet ants closely resembles the spectra produced by other animal species with ...

These ants are covered with cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs)—a waxy substance that functions as a chemical signature for each colony. Ants from the same supercolony share similar CHC profiles ...