A comparative study of egg recognition signature mixtures in<i>Formica</i>ants

Helanterä, Heikki; d’Ettorre, Patrizia

doi:10.1111/evo.12590

Cited by 22 publications

(37 citation statements)

References 97 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Still, chemical similarity among colony members was linked to their genetic similarity. This relation was also found in previous studies, although the evidence is equivocal (Martin et al 2009;Helanterä et al 2011;Helanterä and D'Ettorre 2015).…”

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Odor diversity decreases with inbreeding in the antHypoponera opacior

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Reduction in heterozygosity can lead to inbreeding depression. This loss of genetic variability especially affects diverse loci, such as immune genes or those encoding recognition cues. In social insects, nestmates are recognized by their odor, that is their cuticular hydrocarbon profile. Genes underlying hydrocarbon production are thought to be under balancing selection. If so, inbreeding should result in a loss of chemical diversity. We show here that cuticular hydrocarbon diversity decreases with inbreeding. Studying an ant with a facultative inbreeding lifestyle, we found inbred workers to exhibit both a lower number of hydrocarbons and less diverse, that is less evenly proportioned profiles. The association with inbreeding was strong for methyl-branched alkanes, which play a major role in nestmate recognition, and for n-alkanes, whereas unsaturated compounds were unaffected. Shifts in allocation strategies with inbreeding in our focal species indicate that these ants can detect their inbreeding level and use this information to adjust their reproductive strategy. Our study is the first to demonstrate that odor profiles can encode information on inbreeding, with broad implications not only for social insects, but for sexual selection and mate choice in general. Odor profiles may constitute an honest signal of inbreeding, a fitness-relevant trait in many species.

show abstract

Section: Discussionsupporting

confidence: 87%

Odor diversity decreases with inbreeding in the antHypoponera opacior

2016

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Brood hydrocarbon profiles have indeed been shown to be less complex than adult cuticular profiles in some species (Viana et al 2001;Richard et al 2007;Fouks et al 2011). However, the complexity of egg, larval and pupal profiles can also mirror that of adult profiles (Bagnères and Morgan 1991;Akino et al 1999;Elmes et al 2002;Souza et al 2006;Tannure-Nascimento et al 2009;Helanterä and d'Ettorre 2014). We now know that brood surface chemistry can be species, population, and colonyspecific (Brian 1975a;Le Moli and Passetti 1978;Mori and Le Moli 1988;Hare 1996;Akino et al 1999;Viana et al 2001;Johnson et al 2005;Souza et al 2006;Richard et al 2007;Achenbach and Foitzik 2009;Achenbach et al 2010;Schultner et al 2013;Helanterä and d'Ettorre 2014;Pulliainen et al 2018, Peignier et al 2019, and contain information about traits like viability (Dietemann et al 2005), maternity (Monnin and Peeters 1997;Endler et al 2004Endler et al , 2006d'Ettorre et al 2004d'Ettorre et al , 2006Dietemann et al 2005;Meunier et al 2010;Shimoji et al 2012;Helanterä and d'Ettorre 2014), development stage (Johnson et al 2005;Richard et al 2007), sex (Achenbach et al 2010)…”

Section: Yesmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Adult ants from the same nest share a hydrocarbon profile, which is partly inherited (Drescher et al 2010;van Zweden et al 2010;Nehring et al 2011;Helanterä and d'Ettorre 2014) and partly shaped by an individual's nutritional and social environment (Soroker et al 1995;Dahbi et al 1999;Lenoir et al 2001a;Foitzik et al 2007;van Zweden et al 2009a;Bos et al 2011). In addition to their species and colony specificity (e.g., Martin et al 2008a, b), adult hydrocarbon profiles can change with age (Cuvillier-Hot et al 2001;Teseo et al 2014), reflect fecundity (Peeters et al 1999;Liebig et al 2000;Cuvillier-Hot et al 2001Dietemann et al 2003Dietemann et al , 2005Holman et al 2010;Will et al 2012), and differ among body parts (Wang et al 2016), task groups (Wagner et al 1998(Wagner et al , 2001; Martin and Drijfhout 2009b;Larsen et al 2016), 1 3 sexes (Cuvillier-Hot et al 2001;Kleeberg et al 2017), and castes (Monnin 1999;Kleeberg et al 2017).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Brood recognition and discrimination in ants

Schultner

Pulliainen

2020

Insect. Soc.

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

In social insect colonies, individuals need to communicate to coordinate cooperative tasks and protect the colony and its resources against intruders. To maintain colony integrity, it can be particularly important to recognize nestmates and discriminate against non-nestmate conspecifics and heterospecific predators and parasites. As typical intruders are either con-or heterospecific adults, the mechanisms underlying recognition and discrimination processes in interactions among adults have been well described. Ant brood (eggs, larvae, and pupae) can also play a key role in social interactions, and brood is of special importance when it comes to the priorities of worker ants. However, whether ants can, or even need to, recognize brood of different origins, is not always clear. In this review, we integrate the results of 100 years of study on brood recognition and discrimination in ants into a general framework. We begin with an overview of the proximate mechanisms involved in brood recognition and discrimination. We then discuss why brood recognition and discrimination should evolve and review the evidence for brood recognition on three organizational levels: within nests, between conspecifics and between species. We conclude by examining the constraints acting on accurate recognition and/or discrimination. With this review, we hope to inspire future research on the fascinating life of ant brood.

show abstract

“…This is surprising, as begging behavior was quantified in sibling groups, and larvae presumably had no access to information about average colony kin structure. This suggests that the relatedness effect is either mediated through a maternal effect-as the mother and the workers who tend to her do have access to information on kin structure (see e.g., Helanterä and d'Ettorre, 2015)-or factors that covary with both kin structure and brood provisioning levels. Further studies that include more species with varying kin structures and, ideally, studies that experimentally manipulate relatedness and its potential covariates such as colony size, are now needed to better comprehend the impact of kin structure on larval behavior within and between species.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…The last hypothesis is particularly likely for high-relatedness species, where each colony is genetically distinct. Indeed, the chemical profiles of F. fusca eggs are known to be more colony-specific than those of species with lower relatedness such as F. aquilonia (Helanterä and d'Ettorre, 2015). Chemical analyses of larval odors also highlighted an interesting phenomenon.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Honesty of Larval Begging Signals Covaries With Colony Kin Structure in Formica Ants

et al. 2019

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Social insects live in highly complex societies with efficient communication systems. Begging is one display commonly used by offspring to signal their nutritional state, however begging behavior has received very little attention in social insects. Theory predicts that begging can be either an honest (i.e., honest-signaling strategy) or a dishonest (i.e., scrambling competition) signal of need, with dishonest signals expected to be more likely when relatedness within the group is low. To investigate the presence and honesty of begging, as well as the nature of the involved signals, we used a comparative approach with four species of the ant genus Formica known to differ in the degree of intra-colony relatedness. We investigated the behavior of starved and non-starved larvae of F. aquilonia, F. pressilabris (both low intra-colony relatedness), F. exsecta (intermediate relatedness), and F. fusca (high relatedness). In addition, we assessed the attraction of conspecific workers toward odors extracted from these two classes of larvae and analyzed the larval cuticular hydrocarbon profiles. We found that in F. fusca and F. exsecta, larvae signaled significantly more when starved. In contrast, larvae of F. aquilonia signaled significantly more when they were non-starved, while there was no significant difference in the behavior of starved vs. non-starved larvae in F. pressilabris. Our results show that workers were not preferentially attracted to the odor of starved larvae, and we also did not detect any differences between the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of starved and non-starved larvae. Overall, this study demonstrates among species variation in larval hunger signaling in Formica ants, and encourages further studies to confirm the link between kin structure variation and the honesty of begging signals.

show abstract

A comparative study of egg recognition signature mixtures inFormicaants

Cited by 22 publications

References 97 publications

Odor diversity decreases with inbreeding in the antHypoponera opacior

Odor diversity decreases with inbreeding in the antHypoponera opacior

Brood recognition and discrimination in ants

Honesty of Larval Begging Signals Covaries With Colony Kin Structure in Formica Ants

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About