Dataset Information

Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.

ABSTRACT:

Background

Social insects form densely crowded societies in environments with high pathogen loads, but have evolved collective defences that mitigate the impact of disease. However, colony-founding queens lack this protection and suffer high rates of mortality. The impact of pathogens may be exacerbated in species where queens found colonies together, as healthy individuals may contract pathogens from infectious co-founders. Therefore, we tested whether ant queens avoid founding colonies with pathogen-exposed conspecifics and how they might limit disease transmission from infectious individuals.

Results

Using Lasius niger queens and a naturally infecting fungal pathogen Metarhizium brunneum, we observed that queens were equally likely to found colonies with another pathogen-exposed or sham-treated queen. However, when one queen died, the surviving individual performed biting, burial and removal of the corpse. These undertaking behaviours were performed prophylactically, i.e. targeted equally towards non-infected and infected corpses, as well as carried out before infected corpses became infectious. Biting and burial reduced the risk of the queens contracting and dying from disease from an infectious corpse of a dead co-foundress.

Conclusions

We show that co-founding ant queens express undertaking behaviours that, in mature colonies, are performed exclusively by workers. Such infection avoidance behaviours act before the queens can contract the disease and will therefore improve the overall chance of colony founding success in ant queens.

SUBMITTER: Pull CD

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5639488 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Oct

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Publications

Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.

Pull Christopher D CD Cremer Sylvia S

BMC evolutionary biology 20171013 1

<h4>Background</h4>Social insects form densely crowded societies in environments with high pathogen loads, but have evolved collective defences that mitigate the impact of disease. However, colony-founding queens lack this protection and suffer high rates of mortality. The impact of pathogens may be exacerbated in species where queens found colonies together, as healthy individuals may contract pathogens from infectious co-founders. Therefore, we tested whether ant queens avoid founding colonies ...[more]

PMID: 29025392

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Project description:AbstractKey social traits, like queen number in eusocial insect colonies, have long been considered plastic, but the recent finding that colony social organization is under strict genetic control in multiple ant lineages challenges this view. This begs the question of which hardwired behavioral mechanism(s) generate alternative forms of social organization during colony development. We addressed this question in the Alpine silver ant, Formica selysi, a species with two social forms determined by a supergene. Queens that carry exclusively the M haplotype are produced by and live in monogyne (= single-queen) colonies, whereas queens that carry at least one copy of the P haplotype are produced by and live in polygyne (= multiple-queen) colonies. With extensive field samplings and laboratory experiments, we show that both types of queens successfully establish colonies independently, without being accompanied by workers, but that they do so in contrasting ways. Monogyne queens were generally intolerant of other queens and founded colonies solitarily, whereas polygyne queens were mutually attracted to each other and mainly founded colonies cooperatively. These associations persisted for months after worker emergence, suggesting that cooperative colony-founding leads to permanent multiple queening. Overall, our study shows that queens of each social form found colonies independently in the field but that P-carrying queens are more likely to cooperate, thereby contributing to perpetuate alternative forms of social organization.Significance statementUnderstanding the genetic and behavioral underpinnings of social organization is a major goal in evolutionary biology. Recent studies have shown that colony social organization is controlled by supergenes in multiple ant lineages. But the behavioral processes linking the genotype of a queen to the type of colony she will form remain largely unknown. Here, we show that in Alpine silver ants, alternative supergene genotypes are associated with different levels of social attraction and tolerance in young queens. These hardwired differences in social traits make queens carrying the P supergene haplotype more prone to cooperate and form durable associations during independent colony-founding. These findings help explain how genetic variants induce alternative forms of social organization during the ontogeny of a colony. They also illustrate how simple phenotypic differences at the individual level can result in large differences at higher levels of organization.Supplementary informationThe online version contains supplementary material available at 10.1007/s00265-021-03105-1.

Dataset Information

Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.

Background

Results

Conclusions

Publications

Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.

Similar Datasets

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