Diez Lise, Lejeune Philippe, Detrain Claire
Unit of Social Ecology, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Bruxelles, Belgium
Unité de Gestion des Ressources forestières et des Milieux Naturels, Université de Liège, Gembloux, Belgium.
Biol Lett. 2014 Jul;10(7). doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2014.0306.
Sociality increases exposure to pathogens. Therefore, social insects have developed a wide range of behavioural defences, known as 'social immunity'. However, the benefits of these behaviours in terms of colony survival have been scarcely investigated. We tested the survival advantage of prophylaxis, i.e. corpse removal, in ants. Over 50 days, we compared the survival of ants in colonies that were free to remove corpses with those that were restricted in their corpse removal. From Day 8 onwards, the survival of adult workers was significantly higher in colonies that were allowed to remove corpses normally. Overall, larvae survived better than adults, but were slightly affected by the presence of corpses in the nest. When removal was restricted, ants removed as many corpses as they could and moved the remaining corpses away from brood, typically to the nest corners. These results show the importance of nest maintenance and prophylactic behaviour in social insects.
社会性增加了接触病原体的机会。因此，群居昆虫已经发展出了广泛的行为防御机制，即所谓的“社会免疫”。然而，这些行为对蚁群生存的益处却鲜有研究。我们测试了预防性措施（即移除尸体）对蚂蚁的生存优势。在50天的时间里，我们比较了能够自由移除尸体的蚁群和尸体移除受到限制的蚁群中蚂蚁的存活率。从第8天起，能够正常移除尸体的蚁群中成年工蚁的存活率显著更高。总体而言，幼虫比成虫存活得更好，但巢穴中尸体的存在对其有轻微影响。当移除受到限制时，蚂蚁会尽可能多地移除尸体，并将剩余尸体从幼虫处移开，通常移到巢穴角落。这些结果表明了巢穴维护和预防性行为在群居昆虫中的重要性。
