In:
eLife, eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd, Vol. 7 ( 2018-01-09)
Abstract:
Ants live in crowded societies where disease can spread rapidly and take a heavy toll on the community. Ants have a number of ways to prevent these outbreaks before they become a problem. Like many other social species, they practice good hygiene and groom nest mates that have picked up a pathogen, which helps them to recover and to reduce the likelihood of the disease spreading. Unlike other social species, ants appear to have evolved collective disease defence, or social immunity, because their colonies behave like a ‘superorganism’, in which the society behaves much like a single organism would. Like an individual animal that has an infection, the colony needs to be able to eliminate infections collectively when a nest mate falls ill, to prevent the disease from spreading. To understand how an ant colony protects itself when the care fails and a colony member contracts a lethal infection, Pull et al. infected the brood of the invasive garden ant with a common soil fungus. Using a combination of chemical analyses and behavioural observations, it was shown that the infected pupae emitted a chemical cue, which the tending ants could detect. Using a microscopic camera, Pull et al. found that when the ants sensed the cue, they would unpack the infected pupae from their cocoons and bite them. They then sprayed them with an antiseptic poison, which entered the hole in the pupae’s body, killing both the pupae and the fungus inside, before it had a chance to spread. This process of destructive disinfection may seem like a large sacrifice, but it helps to protect the rest of the colony from a fungus that could lead to much greater damage. The tending ants were acting within the superorganism of the colony much like immune cells act within an individual’s body – honing in on infected cells and destroying them before the pathogen can spread to other cells. This suggests that the ability to detect and destroy harmful elements was necessary for both the evolution of multicellular organisms, and from single animals to superorganisms.
Type of Medium:
Online Resource
ISSN:
2050-084X
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.001
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.002
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.003
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.004
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.005
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.006
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.007
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.008
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.009
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.010
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.011
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.012
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.013
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.014
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.015
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.016
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.017
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.018
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.019
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.020
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.021
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.022
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.023
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.024
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.028
DOI:
10.7554/eLife.32073.029
Language:
English
Publisher:
eLife Sciences Publications, Ltd
Publication Date:
2018
detail.hit.zdb_id:
2687154-3
