Little ants groom big ones in a desert spa
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Ants in the Dorymyrmex genus attend to the face and body of a harvester ant. Credit: M. W. Moffett/Ecol. Evol.
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Even ants deserve their spa day. Pogonomyrmex barbatus harvester ants pay regular visits to the nests of much smaller ants, which seem to groom the hulking visitors — the first known example of such mutualism between ant species1.
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doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-026-01237-w
References
- Moffett, M. W. Ecol. Evol. 16, e73308 (2026).
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Zoology
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