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Aiming to show that ants could be used as biological models for examining effects of substances or treatments on living organisms, we looked to effects of morphine and quinine on 14 ethological and/or physiological traits, using the ant species Myrmica sabuleti. Doing so, we made the following observations. Morphine decreases the animals‟ activity, precision of reaction, response to social signals and audacity. It does not impact the insects‟ food consumption but largely decreases their tactile sensation, at least at the beginning of its consumption. Morphine also decreases the individuals‟ cognition, conditioning ability and memory. Habituation to morphine soon occurs as for the individuals‟ activity, but slowly develops as for the tactile sensation. A strong dependence on morphine consumption exists. Effects of morphine quickly decrease with time, vanishing in about eight hours. Quinine increases the individuals‟ activity, does not affect their precision of reaction, or their response to social signals. This alkaloid does not affect individuals‟ audacity, might increase their food consumption (in fact, as long as they are hungry), and somewhat decreases their tactile sensation. Under quinine consumption, ants‟ cognitive, conditioning and memorization abilities are better. No habituation, as well as no dependence, occurs even after 14 days. Effects of quinine linearly decrease in the course of time, vanishing in about ten hours, what is followed by a recovery period of about ten hours. We observed dependence on a substance when habituation occurs and when effects of the substance quickly vanish with time. Several effects of morphine and of quinine we found on ants are in agreement with some of them known in humans (i.e. morphine decreases tactile sensation). Other effects sometimes mentioned in humans are clearly defined in ants (i.e. morphine decreases activity, quinine increases cognition and memory). All these effects can be more precisely quantified (i.e. mathematical functions of the decrease of the effects with time, after drug consumption ends). Ants, which are highly evoluted social animals, could thus be advantageously used as biological models, being easily available and requiring cheap equipment.