Body size predicts how long ant workers live - but not how they age or how they die from heat

Excerpt

arXiv:2608.14245v1 Announce Type: cross Abstract: In social insects, mortality risk comprises distinct components that may not share the same predictors: lifespan duration, senescence trajectory, and thermal vulnerability. We tested these three axes in 18 Australian ant species using paired field-laboratory survival assays (2,363 cohort-day observations; 1,148 workers). Body size predicted duration (Cox HR = 0.67, p = 0.002), while colony size (p = 0.60) and the size x temperature interaction (p