A single dose of a common pesticide causes ant queens to stop caring for their young, leading to colony collapse.
April 24, 2026
Original Paper
Long-term impacts of a single uptake of imidacloprid on brood care and reproduction in ant founding queens
SSRN · 6629306
The Takeaway
Pesticides are often tested for their ability to kill insects quickly, but their long-term effects on behavior are often ignored. This study shows that queen ants exposed to imidacloprid once will survive but lose the instinct to clean their larvae. Without this care, the young ants are quickly overwhelmed by deadly mites and infections. The entire colony eventually dies out not because the poison killed them, but because the social structure broke down. This highlights a hidden toxicity that could be devastating for wild insect populations.
From the abstract
Ants are key components of most terrestrial habitats and contribute to various ecosystem services. They live in social colonies composed of reproductive (males and queens) and non-reproductive (workers) castes. Most ant colonies are founded independently by a single queen directly after the mating flight. Any pesticide-induced impairment during the critical founding period can have long-lasting consequences for colony establishment and growth, yet empirical data on pesticide effects on colony fo