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

I give details of the first known example of an ant (i.e., an undescribed Dorymyrmex close to D. medeis) that licks and nibbles on individuals of another, much larger ant species (workers of Pogonomyrmex barbatus) in much the way cleaner fish clean other species of fish. The Pogonomymex encourage this behavior by stationing themselves near Dorymyrmex nest entrances and even permit the Dorymyrmex to inspect between their open mandibles. The payoffs of this activity for both the cleaners and the tended workers have yet to be established. The First Cleaner Ant? A Novel Partnership in the Arizona Desert By Mark W. Moffett, Ph.D. Data availability statement: All data associated with this submission as a ”Nature Note” are available in the publication itself. Suggested readings: Caves, E.M., 2021. The behavioural ecology of marine cleaning mutualisms. Biological Reviews, 96, 2584-2601. Chon, M.K., Kahvazadeh, D., Penick, C.A., 2025. Dual strategies in ant social immunity: Chemical diversity and pathogen specificity in antimicrobial defense. bioRxiv, 2025-07. Gibson, R., Barnes, M. 2000. Evolution and ecology of cleaning symbioses in the sea. Oceanography and Marine Biology: An Annual Review, 38, 311–355 . Hölldobler, B., 1986. Food robbing in ants, a form of interference competition. Oecologia, 69, 12-15. Hölldobler, B., Wilson, E.O., 1990. The Ants. Cambridge: Harvard University Press. Kwapich, C.L., Gadau, J., Hölldobler, B., 2017. Ecological and genetic basis of annual worker production in a desert seed harvesting ant ( Veromessor pergandei ). Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology, 71, https://doi.org/10.1007/s00265-017-2333-1 Moffett, M.W., 2010. Adventures Among Ants: A global safari with a cast of trillions . University of California Press. Möglich, M.H., Alpert, G.D., 1979. Stone dropping by Conomyrma bicolor : a new technique of interference competition. Behavioral Ecology and sociobiology, 6, 105-113. Narvaez, P., Morais, R.A., Vaughan, D.B., Grutter, A.S., Hutson, K.S., 2022. Cleaner fish are potential super-spreaders. Journal of Experimental Biology, 225, p.jeb244469. Negroni, M.A., LeBoeuf, A.C., 2023. Metabolic division of labor in social insects. Current Opinion in Insect Science, 59, p.101085. Poulin, R., Grutter, A.S., 1996. Cleaning symbioses: proximate and adaptive explanations. Bioscience, 46, 512-517. Richard, F.J., Dejean, A., Lachaud, J.P., 2004. Sugary food robbing in ants: a case of temporal cleptobiosis. Comptes Rendus Biologies, 327, 509-517. Sachs, J.L., Mueller, U.G., Wilcox, T.P., Bull, J.J., 2004. The evolution of cooperation. The Quarterly review of biology, 79, 135-160. Ward, P.S., Brady, S.G., Fisher, B.L., Schultz, T.R., 2010. Phylogeny and biogeography of dolichoderine ants: effects of data partitioning and relict taxa on historical inference. Systematic Biology, 59, 342-362. Wheeler, W.M., 1910. Ants: their structure, development and behavior . Columbia Univ. Press. Xavier, R., Mazzei, R., Pérez-Losada, M., Rosado, D., Santos, J.L., Veríssimo, A., Soares, M.C., 2019. A risky business? Habitat and social behavior impact skin and gut microbiomes in Caribbean cleaning gobies. Frontiers in microbiology, 10, 716-724. Information & Authors Information Peer review timeline Published Ecology and Evolution Version of Record12 Apr 2026Published Copyright This work is licensed under a Non Exclusive No Reuse License.

Authors Funding Information Metrics & Citations Metrics Article Usage 293views 182downloads Citations Download citation Mark Moffett. The First Cleaner Ant? A Novel Partnership in the Arizona Desert. Authorea. 12 March 2026. DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177081516.65212177/v2 DOI: https://doi.org/10.22541/au.177081516.65212177/v2 If you have the appropriate software installed, you can download article citation data to the citation manager of your choice. Simply select your manager software from the list below and click Download. For more information or tips please see 'Downloading to a citation manager' in the Help menu.