An international team of researchers headed by biologist Lukas Schrader from Münster University show that a socially parasitic lifestyle of ants not only leads to a change in external traits, but also to a genome erosion in the species. This so-called genome erosion impacted genes particularly important for non-parasitic ants, such as olfactory receptors functioning in chemical communication. These findings indicate that the evolution of social parasitism follows similar evolutionary mechanisms as that of non-social, (“regular”) parasitism. The study is published in the journal „Nature Communications“.