How do cuticular hydrocarbons evolve? Physiological constraints and climatic and biotic selection pressures act on a complex functional trait

Menzel, Florian; Blaimer, Bonnie B.; Schmitt, Thomas

doi:10.1098/rspb.2016.1727

Cited by 105 publications

(126 citation statements)

References 60 publications

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“…Because CHCs primarily serve a waterproofing role, one can wonder about the extent to which climate, especially air humidity and rainfall, shapes CHC evolution. Menzel et al [4] address this question and find that the amount of rainfall in an ant's environment indeed influences CHC profiles.…”

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…This asymmetry is reminiscent of parasitic ant/ant interactions (see below) and thus suggests that parabiosis might have evolved from parasitic associations [55][56][57]. Two factors appear to maintain parabiosis as mutualistic and prevent aggression: distinct CHC profiles with long carbon chains (more than C35; [4], this special feature) allow an ant colony to differentiate its parabiont from other ant species, and appeasement pheromones on the cuticle suppress aggressiveness, as shown for a Camponotus/Crematogaster parabiosis [58]. Non-parabiotic ants, which have different CHC profiles and lack appeasement pheromones, are attacked as intruders [59,60].…”

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…These interactions are mediated by semiochemicals, including cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs), chemical footprints, trail pheromones and alarm pheromones, and these chemicals are central to cooperation and conflict at distinct scales. This section and two papers in this special feature [4,34] focus on chemical communication.…”

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Caste influences the CHC profiles [34,41,42], thereby facilitating the self-organization of the division of labour [43]. Another crucial type of signal for the survival of the colony is nest-mate recognition, highlighted in this special feature [4].…”

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In the The interactions of ants with other ant species are of three main types, mutualistic, parasitic or competitive. In this special feature, two studies focus on the evolution of chemicals that mediate mutualistic ( parabiotic) [4] and parasitic ant/ant interactions [34]. Parabiosis ( [51]; figure 1b) is a mutualistic symbiosis between different ant species that involves nest sharing, joint foraging and aphid tending, whereas brood are kept separate [5,52].…”

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

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The interactions of ants with their biotic environment

Chomicki¹,

Renner²

2017

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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This special feature results from the symposium 'Ants 2016: ant interactions with their biotic environments' held in Munich in May 2016 and deals with the interactions between ants and other insects, plants, microbes and fungi, studied at micro-and macroevolutionary levels with a wide range of approaches, from field ecology to next-generation sequencing, chemical ecology and molecular genetics. In this paper, we review key aspects of these biotic interactions to provide background information for the papers of this special feature. After listing the major types of biotic interactions that ants engage in, we present a brief overview of ant/ant communication, ant/plant interactions, ant/fungus symbioses, and recent insights about ants and their endosymbionts. Using a large molecular clock-dated Formicidae phylogeny, we map the evolutionary origins of different ant clades' interactions with plants, fungi and hemiptera. Ants' biotic interactions provide ideal systems to address fundamental ecological and evolutionary questions about mutualism, coevolution, adaptation and animal communication.

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Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Ant Communication With Other Antsmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 3 more Smart Citations

The interactions of ants with their biotic environment

Chomicki¹,

Renner²

2017

Proc. R. Soc. B.

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Highly diverse cuticular hydrocarbon profiles but no evidence for aggression towards non‐kin in the ambrosia beetle Xyleborinus saxesenii

Melet,

Leibold,

Schmitt

et al. 2024

Ecology and Evolution

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Animal societies use nestmate recognition to protect against social cheaters and parasites. In most social insect societies, individuals recognize and exclude any non‐nestmates and the roles of cuticular hydrocarbons as recognition cues are well documented. Some ambrosia beetles live in cooperatively breeding societies with farmed fungus cultures that are challenging to establish, but of very high value once established. Hence, social cheaters that sneak into a nest without paying the costs of nest foundation may be selected. Therefore, nestmate recognition is also expected to exist in ambrosia beetles, but so far nobody has investigated this behavior and its underlying mechanisms. Here we studied the ability for nestmate recognition in the cooperatively breeding ambrosia beetle Xyleborinus saxesenii, combining behavioural observations and cuticular hydrocarbon analyses. Laboratory nests of X. saxesenii were exposed to foreign adult females from the same population, another population and another species. Survival as well as the behaviours of the foreign female were observed. The behaviours of the receiving individuals were also observed. We expected that increasing genetic distance would cause increasing distance in chemical profiles and increasing levels of behavioural exclusion and possibly mortality. Chemical profiles differed between populations and appeared as variable as in other highly social insects. However, we found only very little evidence for the behavioural exclusion of foreign individuals. Interpopulation donors left nests at a higher rate than control donors, but neither their behaviours nor the behaviours of receiver individuals within the nest showed any response to the foreign individual in either of the treatments. These results suggest that cuticular hydrocarbon profiles might be used for communication and nestmate recognition, but that behavioural exclusion of non‐nestmates is either absent in X. saxesenii or that agonistic encounters are so rare or subtle that they could not be detected by our method. Additional studies are needed to investigate this further.

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Cuticular hydrocarbons as potential mediators of cryptic species divergence in a mutualistic ant association

Hartke

Sprenger

Sahm

et al. 2019

Ecology and Evolution

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Upon advances in sequencing techniques, more and more morphologically identical organisms are identified as cryptic species. Often, mutualistic interactions are proposed as drivers of diversification. Species of the neotropical parabiotic ant association between Crematogaster levior and Camponotus femoratus are known for highly diverse cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profiles, which in insects serve as desiccation barrier but also as communication cues. In the present study, we investigated the association of the ants’ CHC profiles with genotypes and morphological traits, and discovered cryptic species pairs in both genera. To assess putative niche differentiation between the cryptic species, we conducted an environmental association study that included various climate variables, canopy cover, and mutualistic plant species. Although mostly sympatric, the two Camponotus species seem to prefer different climate niches. However in the two Crematogaster species, we could not detect any differences in niche preference. The strong differentiation in the CHC profiles may thus suggest a possible role during speciation itself either by inducing assortative mating or by reinforcing sexual selection after the speciation event. We did not detect any further niche differences in the environmental parameters tested. Thus, it remains open how the cryptic species avoid competitive exclusion, with scope for further investigations.

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How do cuticular hydrocarbons evolve? Physiological constraints and climatic and biotic selection pressures act on a complex functional trait

Cited by 105 publications

References 60 publications

The interactions of ants with their biotic environment

The interactions of ants with their biotic environment

Highly diverse cuticular hydrocarbon profiles but no evidence for aggression towards non‐kin in the ambrosia beetle Xyleborinus saxesenii

Cuticular hydrocarbons as potential mediators of cryptic species divergence in a mutualistic ant association

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