Early queen infection shapes developmental dynamics and induces long-term disease protection in incipient ant colonies
DOI10.5281/zenodo.5576808Zenodo5576808MaRDI QIDQ6701194FDOQ6701194
Dataset published at Zenodo repository.
Sylvia Cremer, Filip Naiser, Barbara Casillas-Pérez, Elisabeth Naderlinger, Christopher Pull, Jiri Matas
Publication date: 29 October 2021
Infections early in life can have enduring effects on an organism's development and immunity. In this study, we show that this equally applies to developing "superorganisms" – incipient social insect colonies. When we exposed newly mated Lasius niger ant queens to a low pathogen dose, their colonies grew more slowly than controls before winter, but reached similar sizes afterwards. Independent of exposure, queen hibernation survival improved when the ratio of pupae to workers was small. Queens that reared fewer pupae before worker emergence exhibited lower pathogen levels, indicating that high brood rearing efforts interfere with the ability of the queen's immune system to suppress pathogen proliferation. Early-life queen pathogen-exposure also improved the immunocompetence of her worker offspring, as demonstrated by challenging the workers to the same pathogen a year later. Transgenerational transfer of the queen's pathogen experience to her workforce can hence durably reduce the disease susceptibility of the whole superorganism.
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