The evolution of expendability: Why some ants traded armor for numbers

Ants with lots of workers tend to put less energy into making them armored.

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[Lil' ol' me]

as ant societies grew in complexity and numbers, they didn’t just make their workers smaller—they also made them cheaper.

Who's "they"?

It's not "ant societies", as societies of any kind have no influence on natural selection.

And we wonder why non-scientists are confused about evolution. It's terminology like this. Yes, it's a handy shortcut for a complex topic, but it's so misleading.

What this research shows is that natural selection, in ants' current physical environment (temperature, humidity, water & nutrient availability, etc.), with ants' current set of predators, favors quantity (more workers per unit of nutrient) over quality (better equipped workers).

Change any of the conditions (predators, nutrients, etc.) and natural selection may work differently.

This just sounds like a super-creepy justification for some future "leader" to get rid of robust competition by killing off the strongest competitors. This is basically how animal & plant (seedless fruits, oversized veggies that can't survive without human intervention) domestication works.