I'm not sure about ants but some termite species eat other termite's excreta to restore gut microbiota

Hi Dirk,

A scientific article entitled “Bacterial gut symbionts are tightly linked with the evolution of herbivory in ants” (Russel et al., 2009) that can be found through the link below may be useful for getting interesting information about horizontal transfer of gut symbionts between immature and mature ants.

http://www.pnas.org/content/106/50/21236.full.pdf+html

Cheers

Hey dont know much about this but my buddy Scott Schneider from UMass Amherst might be interested in chatting with you.

Maybe can be utility this...