Casacci Luca Pietro, Barbero Francesca, Ślipiński Piotr, Witek Magdalena
Department of Life Sciences and Systems Biology, University of Turin, Via Accademia Albertina 13, 10123 Turin, Italy.
Museum and Institute of Zoology, Polish Academy of Sciences, ul. Wilcza 64, 00-679 Warsaw, Poland.
Biology (Basel). 2021 Jul 12;10(7):654. doi: 10.3390/biology10070654.
Social parasitism represents a particular type of agonistic interaction in which a parasite exploits an entire society instead of a single organism. One fascinating form of social parasitism in ants is the "inquilinism", in which a typically worker-less parasitic queen coexists with the resident queen in the host colony and produces sexual offspring. To bypass the recognition system of host colonies, inquilines have evolved a repertoire of deceiving strategies. We tested the level of integration of the inquiline within the host colonies of and we investigated the mechanisms of chemical and vibroacoustic deception used by the parasite. is integrated into the ant colony to such an extent that, in rescue experiments, the parasite pupae were saved prior to the host's brood. gynes perfectly imitated the cuticular hydrocarbon profiles of queens and the parasite vibroacoustic signals resembled those emitted by the host queens eliciting the same levels of attention in the host workers during playback experiments. Our results suggest that has evolved ultimate deception strategies to reach the highest social status in the colony hierarchy, encouraging the use of a combined molecular and behavioural approach when studying host-parasite interactions.
社会寄生行为是一种特殊的对抗性互动形式，其中寄生虫利用的是整个社群而非单个生物体。蚂蚁社会寄生行为的一种有趣形式是“巢寄生”，即通常没有工蚁的寄生蚁后与宿主蚁群中的常驻蚁后共存，并产生有性后代。为了绕过宿主蚁群的识别系统，巢寄生者进化出了一系列欺骗策略。我们测试了巢寄生者在宿主蚁群中的融入程度，并研究了寄生虫所使用的化学和振动声学欺骗机制。[物种名称]在很大程度上融入了蚁群，以至于在救援实验中，寄生虫蛹比宿主幼虫先得到拯救。[物种名称]的雌蚁完美地模仿了[宿主物种名称]蚁后的表皮碳氢化合物图谱，并且寄生虫的振动声学信号与宿主蚁后发出的信号相似，在回放实验中引起宿主工蚁相同程度的关注。我们的结果表明，[物种名称]已经进化出了终极欺骗策略，以在蚁群等级制度中达到最高社会地位，这鼓励在研究宿主 - 寄生虫相互作用时采用分子和行为相结合的方法。
