Laciny Alice
Konrad Lorenz Institute for Evolution and Cognition Research, Martinstraße 12, 3400, Klosterneuburg, Austria.
Evodevo. 2021 Mar 2;12(1):2. doi: 10.1186/s13227-021-00173-2.
As social insects, ants represent extremely interaction-rich biological systems shaped by tightly integrated social structures and constant mutual exchange with a multitude of internal and external environmental factors. Due to this high level of ecological interconnection, ant colonies can harbour a diverse array of parasites and pathogens, many of which are known to interfere with the delicate processes of ontogeny and caste differentiation and induce phenotypic changes in their hosts. Despite their often striking nature, parasite-induced changes to host development and morphology have hitherto been largely overlooked in the context of ecological evolutionary developmental biology (EcoEvoDevo). Parasitogenic morphologies in ants can, however, serve as "natural experiments" that may shed light on mechanisms and pathways relevant to host development, plasticity or robustness under environmental perturbations, colony-level effects and caste evolution. By assessing case studies of parasites causing morphological changes in their ant hosts, from the eighteenth century to current research, this review article presents a first overview of relevant host and parasite taxa. Hypotheses about the underlying developmental and evolutionary mechanisms, and open questions for further research are discussed. This will contribute towards highlighting the importance of parasites of social insects for both biological theory and empirical research and facilitate future interdisciplinary work at the interface of myrmecology, parasitology, and the EcoEvoDevo framework.
作为社会性昆虫，蚂蚁代表了极其丰富的生物系统，其由紧密整合的社会结构以及与众多内部和外部环境因素的持续相互作用所塑造。由于这种高度的生态互联性，蚁群可能携带各种各样的寄生虫和病原体，其中许多已知会干扰个体发育和种型分化的微妙过程，并在其宿主中诱导表型变化。尽管寄生虫引起的宿主发育和形态变化往往很显著，但在生态进化发育生物学（EcoEvoDevo）的背景下，这些变化迄今在很大程度上被忽视了。然而，蚂蚁中的寄生形态可以作为“自然实验”，有助于揭示与环境扰动下宿主发育、可塑性或稳健性、蚁群水平效应和种型进化相关的机制和途径。通过评估从18世纪到当前研究中导致蚂蚁宿主形态变化的寄生虫案例研究，本文献综述首次概述了相关的宿主和寄生虫分类单元。文中讨论了关于潜在发育和进化机制的假设以及有待进一步研究的开放性问题。这将有助于凸显社会性昆虫寄生虫对生物学理论和实证研究的重要性，并促进未来在蚁学、寄生虫学和EcoEvoDevo框架交叉领域的跨学科研究。
