While it can sometimes finger like we ’ve turned over every last Oliver Stone on this major planet , it ’s a fact that the natural world can still storm us . take some proof ? Just feast your center on these badass raw firedrake ants , discovered deep in the tropical rain forest of New Guinea .
Writing today in PLOS One , a team of bugologist at the Okinawa Institute of Science and Technology has just described two new mintage of Pheidole , the most diverse ant genus on Earth . The distinctive lineament of the newcomers is a crop of fierce - search spines jutting out of their dorsal plate . The scientists could n’t aid but remark how this spiky armor afforded their specimens a dragon - like appearance , which is why they judiciously tossed out traditional Romance appointment conventions in favour of Pheidole viserion and Pheidole drogon .
Honestly , these pismire count a bit scarier thanDaenerys ’s dragonson Game of Thrones .
sprinkle all over the world but concentrated in the wet Torrid Zone , the Pheidole genus admit over 1,000 described species , and scientist suspect there are thousands more wait to be identified . Despite this remarkable variety , most of the species that have been studied are anatomically quite similar . In ecumenical , the Pheidole worker caste is split into two radical : soldier ants , with comically tremendous head and powerful mandibles for milling up seeds , and “ minor proletarian , ” whose cranial feature are less marked .
“ Even though Pheidole vary in sizing quite a bit around the mankind , they more or less keep to the same body plan , ” lead study author Eli Sarnat told Gizmodo . “ Except for these screwball , spiny coinage . ”
discover only in the Indo - Australian part , “ spinescent ” Pheidole are an evolutionary subplot in their own right hand . Sarnat estimates that over 100 metal money share the spiky armour , many of them distantly related . Intruiged that such a striking feature would germinate independently multiple times , Sarnat and his colleagues adjudicate to round up the most armored someone they could incur and kick in them a penny-pinching look using decade - ray microtomography ( micro - CT ) .
Not only did the analytic thinking chair to the authoritative identification of the two Targaryen namesakes , it yielded new clew about the function of the backbone . While scientists antecedently assume that Pheidole thorn develop for defense , micro - CT revealed that the soldier ant have overdo articulatio humeri spines envelop in a layer of muscularity tissue . This extra musculature , the researchers say , suggests the vertebral column could help support the ants ’ thumping promontory or major power those shell mandibles . “ It ’s still a hypothesis , and we still want to do more rigorous testing , ” Sarnat state .
Whatever role that spiky armor does serve , the quest to get a line it speaks to just how picayune we realise about the natural world we ’re now erasing . Perhaps , by bring more of nature ’s overlooked wonders into the spotlight , scientist can prompt the public that this major planet , more than any phantasy macrocosm , is worthy of our admiration .
BiologyGame of Thrones
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