Fungal disease dynamics in insect societies: Optimal killing rates and the ambivalent effect of high social interaction rates

Novak, Sebastian; Cremer, Sylvia

doi:10.1016/j.jtbi.2015.02.018

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 36 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Unclassified

Order By: Relevance

“…Furthermore, the social life of ants also contributes to their resistance against microparasites. Pathogenicity is typically a sigmoidal function with threshold doses leading towards a maximal mortality 65 . Cooperative behaviour between workers inside the nest may contribute to keep the amount of parasites below the threshold of a significant pathogen-induced mortality.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This can be achieved by a careful inspection and grooming of workers that returned to the nest 66 , 67 . Besides the active removal of parasites by mutual grooming, frequent contacts of foragers with nestmates could lead to a passive transmission of conidia and hence to dilution effects reducing the per-ant capita exposure to sublethal doses of pathogens 65 . One may even consider the possibility of delayed benefits such as certain forms of acquired immunity.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

A fungus infected environment does not alter the behaviour of foraging ants

Pereira

Willeput

Detrain

2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Eusocial insects are exposed to a wide range of pathogens while foraging outside their nest. We know that opportunistic scavenging ants are able to assess the sanitary state of food and to discriminate a prey which died from infection by the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum. Here, we investigate whether a contamination of the environment can also influence the behaviour of foragers, both at the individual and collective level. In a Y-maze, Myrmica rubra ants had the choice to forage on two prey patches, one of which containing sporulating items. Unexpectedly, the nearby presence of sporulating bodies did not deter foragers nor prevent them from retrieving palatable prey. Ant colonies exploited both prey patches equally, without further mortality resulting from foraging on the contaminated area. Thus, a contamination of the environment did not prompt an active avoidance by foragers of which the activity depended primarily on the food characteristics. Generalist entomopathogenic fungi such as M. brunneum in the area around the nest appear more to be of a nuisance to ant foragers than a major selective force driving them to adopt avoidance strategies. We discuss the cost–benefit balance derived from the fine-tuning of strategies of pathogen avoidance in ants.

show abstract

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

A fungus infected environment does not alter the behaviour of foraging ants

Pereira

Willeput

Detrain

2021

Sci Rep

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…We use a basic model similar to Konrad et al [32], but here focus on the contraction of disease, i.e. neither addressing the effect of immunization (as in [32]) nor the effect of pathogen spread per se (as in [36]). We thereby model disease spread in the colony as the fraction of infectious versus susceptible ants, which represents the final outcome of the pathogen interacting with the combined individual and collective, behavioural and physiological anti-pathogen defences of the hosts.…”

Section: (B) Modelmentioning

confidence: 99%

Opposing effects of allogrooming on disease transmission in ant societies

Theis

Ugelvig

Marr

et al. 2015

Phil. Trans. R. Soc. B

Self Cite

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

One contribution of 14 to a theme issue 'The sociality-health -fitness nexus in animal societies'. To prevent epidemics, insect societies have evolved collective disease defences that are highly effective at curing exposed individuals and limiting disease transmission to healthy group members. Grooming is an important sanitary behaviour-either performed towards oneself (self-grooming) or towards others (allogrooming)-to remove infectious agents from the body surface of exposed individuals, but at the risk of disease contraction by the groomer. We use garden ants (Lasius neglectus) and the fungal pathogen Metarhizium as a model system to study how pathogen presence affects self-grooming and allogrooming between exposed and healthy individuals. We develop an epidemiological SIS model to explore how experimentally observed grooming patterns affect disease spread within the colony, thereby providing a direct link between the expression and direction of sanitary behaviours, and their effects on colony-level epidemiology. We find that fungus-exposed ants increase self-grooming, while simultaneously decreasing allogrooming. This behavioural modulation seems universally adaptive and is predicted to contain disease spread in a great variety of host-pathogen systems. In contrast, allogrooming directed towards pathogen-exposed individuals might both increase and decrease disease risk. Our model reveals that the effect of allogrooming depends on the balance between pathogen infectiousness and efficiency of social host defences, which are likely to vary across host-pathogen systems.

show abstract

“…Por exemplo, quando algum agente patogênico infecta alguns membros de A. mellifera, há um aumento da temperatura da colônia para reduzir efetivamente a carga de patogênica (Starks et al, 2000). Vale ressaltar que, de modo geral, o grooming é a primeira linha de defesa contra microrganismos invasores (Zhukovskaya et al, 2013), com direta influência na saúde da colônia (Konrad et al, 2012), sabendo-se que operárias contaminadas recebem mais interações de limpeza (allogrooming) (Hölldobler & Wilson, 1990;Novak & Cremer, 2015).…”

Section: Imunidade Social Em Abelhasunclassified

Efeito do fungo entomopatogênico Beauveria bassiana no reconhecimento de companheiras de ninho da abelha nativa >i<Tetragonisca angustula>/i< (Apidae: Meliponini)

Almeida¹

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

Aos meus pais, Orlivan Vieira (in memorian) e Rita de Cássia, por todo amor e apoio durante todos esses anos. Obrigado pelo suor que por mim derramaram, pela fibra e coragem que nunca lhes faltou. Ao Prof. Dr. José Maurício Simões Bento, pela confiança e orientação. Obrigado por todos os ensinamentos e oportunidades que me apresentou ao longo desta caminhada. À Dra. Denise de Araujo Alves, por toda a ajuda.

show abstract

Fungal disease dynamics in insect societies: Optimal killing rates and the ambivalent effect of high social interaction rates

Cited by 6 publications

References 36 publications

A fungus infected environment does not alter the behaviour of foraging ants

A fungus infected environment does not alter the behaviour of foraging ants

Opposing effects of allogrooming on disease transmission in ant societies

Efeito do fungo entomopatogênico Beauveria bassiana no reconhecimento de companheiras de ninho da abelha nativa >i<Tetragonisca angustula>/i< (Apidae: Meliponini)

Contact Info

Product

Resources

About