Ant puke networks: Trophallaxis as distribution mechanism for shared, fault tolerant, colony wide immune system.
When an ant is sick or infected with a cordyceps fungus, other ants will come and lick them. This has two uses: since the immune system is shared and distributed, you don't know which ant has the antibodies to fight the invading fungus. It also means the healthy ants will have a chance to have their bacteria develop antibodies, thus boosting the antibody for the colony as a whole.
As a network, you'll see the entire colony quickly get sick... until the one ant who's immune (or develops immunity) ends up spreading the antibody.
You can think of it as a giant ant based cuddle puddle. A real world example of herd immunity rippling thru the have.
This is incidentally also seems to be why borax based ant killer is so effective (especially on colonies with single-queens).
It mirrors our own distributed immune system.
Some ants are always infected by a cordyceps... but in a really weird way.
Somewhere in their history, one of a fungi developed an immunity to the ant, but also didn't kill them. Instead this fungus seems to prey on the wild cordyceps variety.
Ants happily spread this in their hive b/c the hyper-parasite provides them an inoculation.
It also means any ants who don't perform trophallaxis will probably die in the wilderness and be unable to form their own colony.
Ant Based Chemical Warfare.
@ultimape whoa, that's pretty neat!