Explosive Backpacks in Old Termite Workers

Šobotník, Jan; Bourguignon, Thomas; Hanus, Robert; Demianová, Zuzana; Pytelková, Jana; Mareš, Michael; Foltynová, Pavla; Preisler, Jan; Cvačka, Josef; Krasulová, Jana; Roisin, Yves

doi:10.1126/science.1219129

Cited by 64 publications

(35 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…This explains how mass cell suicide can evolve, as any small benefit to surviving clonemates can lead to the strategy being favoured by natural selection. Our findings have strong parallels to the suicidal attacks of social insects [5–8], which are also performed by individuals with low reproductive potential, suggesting convergent evolution in these very different organisms.…”

supporting

confidence: 72%

“…However, in terms of function, much more similar are examples from the social insects. Massive suicidal attacks are known from several insect species (Figure 5C) where they are performed by the old workers that have the lowest reproductive and helping potential in the colony [5–8]. We see a clear parallel in our experiments where the highest levels of cell suicide occur under conditions where the cells are going to die anyway from exposure to the toxin.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

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The Evolution of Mass Cell Suicide in Bacterial Warfare

Granato

Foster

2020

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HIGHLIGHTS 6 7 • A novel assay can detect Escherichia coli undergoing cell suicide to release toxins 8 • We quantified the frequency of suicidal self-lysis during competitions 9• Under some conditions, nearly all cells will self-lyse to release toxins 10• Self-lysis makes evolutionary sense as cells will die anyway from competitors' toxins 11 SUMMARY 12 13Behaviours that reliably cause the death of an actor are typically strongly disfavoured by natural 14 selection, and yet many bacteria undergo cell lysis to release anti-competitor toxins [1][2][3][4]. This 15 behaviour is most easily explained if only a few cells die to release toxins and help their clonemates, 16 but the number of cells that actually lyse during bacterial warfare is unknown. The challenge is that 17 one cannot distinguish cells that have undergone programmed suicide from those that were simply 18 killed by a competitor's toxin. We developed a two-colour fluorescence reporter assay in Escherichia 19 coli to overcome this problem. Surprisingly, this revealed conditions where nearly all cells undergo 20 programmed lysis. Adding a DNA-damaging toxin (DNase colicin) to a focal strain causes it to engage 21 in mass cell suicide where around 85% of cells lyse to release their own toxin. Time-lapse 3D confocal 22

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supporting

confidence: 72%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 57%

The Evolution of Mass Cell Suicide in Bacterial Warfare

Granato

Foster

2020

Preprint

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“…Rupturing can also cause the internal organs to burst out, in this case without toxic secretions, in a process called dehiscence that mostly occurs in soldierless termite workers (Sands, ), although it has been found in soldiers of the genera Glossotermes , Serritermes and Apilitermes (Deligne & DeConinck, ; Sobotnik et al ., ). This tactic differs from others described here, as it is a single‐use behaviour, because the worker invariably dies (Sobotnik et al ., ; Bourguignon et al ., ).…”

Section: Ant Predation As a Top‐down Controller Of Termite Communitiesmentioning

confidence: 98%

Ant‐termite interactions: an important but under‐explored ecological linkage

2019

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Animal interactions play an important role in understanding ecological processes. The nature and intensity of these interactions can shape the impacts of organisms on their environment. Because ants and termites, with their high biomass and range of ecological functions, have considerable effects on their environment, the interaction between them is important for ecosystem processes. Although the manner in which ants and termites interact is becoming increasingly well studied, there has been no synthesis to date of the available literature. Here we review and synthesise all existing literature on anttermite interactions. We infer that ant predation on termites is the most important, most widespread, and most studied type of interaction. Predatory ant species can regulate termite populations and subsequently slow down the decomposition of wood, litter and soil organic matter. As a consequence they also affect plant growth and distribution, nutrient cycling and nutrient availability. Although some ant species are specialised termite predators, there is probably a high level of opportunistic predation by generalist ant species, and hence their impact on ecosystem processes that termites are known to provide varies at the species level. The most fruitful future research direction will be to evaluate the impact of ant-termite predation on broader ecosystem processes. To do this it will be necessary to quantify the efficacy both of particular ant species and of ant communities as a whole in regulating termite populations in different biomes. We envisage that this work will require a combination of methods, including DNA barcoding of ant gut contents along with field observations and exclusion experiments. Such a combined approach is necessary for assessing how this interaction influences entire ecosystems.

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“…Finally, several of the other described exocrine glands are specific to a few species, such as the defensive glands of Ruptitermes or Neocapritermes involved in the selfsacrifice of its carrier through autothysis (e.g. Costa-Leonardo, 2004;Sobotník et al, 2012Sobotník et al, , 2014. Among the different castes occurring in termite colonies, imagoes are the one with the highest diversity of exocrine glands.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 98%