New York Times: About five years ago, Alain Lenoir, a researcher at François Rabelais University in Tours, France, was studying the biochemical process by which ants differentiate between friends and foes.
Scientists had come to understand that the insects used their antennae to sense the makeup of the hydrocarbons of other ants` cuticles. Using chemical analyses like gas chromatography, Dr. Lenoir had begun focusing in particular on hydrocarbons on Lasius niger, the common black ant.
Dr. Lenoir, who has been...