Learning distinct chemical labels of nestmates in ants

Neupert, Stefanie; Hornung, Manuel; Millar, Jocelyn G.; Kleineidam, Christoph

Learning distinct chemical labels of nestmates in ants

Dateien

Neupert_2-jnfo9u6i006c8.pdfGröße: 1.72 MBDownloads: 194

Datum

2018

Autor:innen

Neupert, Stefanie

Hornung, Manuel

Millar, Jocelyn G.

Kleineidam, Christoph

Open Access-Veröffentlichung

Open Access Gold

Sammlungen

Biologie

Publikationstyp

Zeitschriftenartikel

Publikationsstatus

Published

Erschienen in

Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 2018, 12, 191. eISSN 1662-5153. Available under: doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00191

Zusammenfassung

Colony coherence is essential for eusocial insects because it supports the inclusive fitness of colony members. Ants quickly and reliably recognize who belongs to the colony (nestmates) and who is an outsider (non-nestmates) based on chemical recognition cues (cuticular hydrocarbons: CHCs) which as a whole constitute a chemical label. The process of nestmate recognition often is described as matching a neural template with the label. In this study, we tested the prevailing view that ants use commonalities in the colony odor that are present in the CHC profile of all individuals of a colony or whether different CHC profiles are learned independently. We created and manipulated sub-colonies by adding one or two different hydrocarbons that were not present in the original colony odor of our Camponotus floridanus colony and later tested workers of the sub-colonies in one-on-one encounters for aggressive responses. We found that workers adjust their nestmate recognition by learning novel, manipulated CHC profiles, but still accept workers with the previous CHC profile. Workers from a sub-colony with two additional components showed aggression against workers with only one of the two components added to their CHC profile. Thus, additional components as well as the lack of a component can alter a label as 'non-nestmate'. Our results suggest that ants have multiple-templates to recognize nestmates carrying distinct labels. This finding is in contrast to what previously has been proposed, i.e., a widening of the acceptance range of one template. We conclude that nestmate recognition in ants is a partitioned (multiple-template) process of the olfactory system that allows discrimination and categorization of nestmates by differences in their CHC profiles. Our findings have strong implications for our understanding of the underlying mechanisms of colony coherence and task allocation because they illustrate the importance of individual experience and task associated differences in the CHC profiles that can be instructive for the organization of insect societies.

Fachgebiet (DDC)

570 Biowissenschaften, Biologie

Schlagwörter

pattern recognition, label-template matching, cuticular hydrocarbons, synthetic odor processing, social insects, Camponotus floridanus, Olfaction

Zitieren

ISO 690

NEUPERT, Stefanie, Manuel HORNUNG, Jocelyn G. MILLAR, Christoph KLEINEIDAM, 2018. Learning distinct chemical labels of nestmates in ants. In: Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 2018, 12, 191. eISSN 1662-5153. Available under: doi: 10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00191

BibTex

@article{Neupert2018-08-29Learn-43108,
  year={2018},
  doi={10.3389/fnbeh.2018.00191},
  title={Learning distinct chemical labels of nestmates in ants},
  volume={12},
  journal={Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience},
  author={Neupert, Stefanie and Hornung, Manuel and Millar, Jocelyn G. and Kleineidam, Christoph},
  note={Article Number: 191}
}

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