Abstract
Contagious diseases are a major threat to societies in which individuals live in close contact. Social insects have evolved collective defense behaviors, such as social care or isolation of infected workers, that prevent outbreaks of pathogens. It has thus been suggested that individual immunity is reduced in species with such ‘social immunity’. However, this hypothesis has not been tested functionally. Here, we characterize the immune response of the ant Lasius niger using a combination of genomic analysis, experimental infections, gene expression quantification, behavioural observations and pathogen quantifications. We uncover a striking specialization of immune responses towards different pathogens. Systemic individual immunity is effective against opportunistic bacterial infections, which are not covered by social immunity, but is not elicited upon fungal infections, which are effectively controlled by social immunity. This specialization suggests that immune layers have evolved complementary functions predicted to ensure the most cost-effective response against a wide range of pathogens.
| Originalsprog | Engelsk |
|---|---|
| Artikelnummer | 9260 |
| Tidsskrift | Nature Communications |
| Vol/bind | 15 |
| Udgave nummer | 1 |
| Antal sider | 13 |
| ISSN | 2041-1723 |
| DOI | |
| Status | Udgivet - 2024 |
Bibliografisk note
Funding Information:We thank Prof Nicolai Vitt Meyling from the University of Copenhagen for providing the M. brunneum strain and Bruno Lemaitre from Ecole Polytechnique F\u00E9d\u00E9rale de Lausanne for providing all other microbes. We are also grateful to Hannah Westlake for sharing her invaluable knowledge on Drosophila immunity, to Daniel Schl\u00E4ppi and to Paris Donelly for technical assistance, and to Luke Leckie, Beki Kennard and Tom Richardson for comments on the manuscript. FM, RB and NS acknowledge funding by the European Research Council (ERC Starting Grant \u2018DISEASE\u2019, no. 802628, to NS). RB and NS acknowledge funding by the Biotechnology and Biological Sciences Research Council (BBSRC grant BB/X511997/1, to the University of Bristol).
Publisher Copyright:
© The Author(s) 2024.