The First Cleaner Ant? A Novel Partnership in the Arizona Desert

ABSTRACT I give an account of the first known example of an ant (i.e., an undescribed Dorymyrmex ) that licks and nips the much larger workers of a different ant species ( Pogonomyrmex barbatus ) in a manner remarkably parallel to the actions of cleaner fish that clean other species of fish. Specifically, the potentially aggressive individuals being tended encourage these attentions by stationing themselves in a distinctive, rigid posture at particular locations (in the case of the ant, near the nest of the cleaner species) and even permit a cleaner to inspect between their open mandibles. The payoffs of this activity for both the cleaners and the tended workers have yet to be worked out.