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Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection

Infections with potentially lethal pathogens may negatively affect an individual's lifespan and decrease its reproductive value. The terminal investment hypothesis predicts that individuals faced with a reduced survival should invest more into reproduction instead of maintenance and growth. Sev...

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Detalles Bibliográficos
Autores principales: Giehr, Julia, Grasse, Anna V., Cremer, Sylvia, Heinze, Jürgen, Schrempf, Alexandra
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: The Royal Society Publishing 2017
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28791176
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170547
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author Giehr, Julia
Grasse, Anna V.
Cremer, Sylvia
Heinze, Jürgen
Schrempf, Alexandra
author_facet Giehr, Julia
Grasse, Anna V.
Cremer, Sylvia
Heinze, Jürgen
Schrempf, Alexandra
author_sort Giehr, Julia
collection PubMed
description Infections with potentially lethal pathogens may negatively affect an individual's lifespan and decrease its reproductive value. The terminal investment hypothesis predicts that individuals faced with a reduced survival should invest more into reproduction instead of maintenance and growth. Several studies suggest that individuals are indeed able to estimate their body condition and to increase their reproductive effort with approaching death, while other studies gave ambiguous results. We investigate whether queens of a perennial social insect (ant) are able to boost their reproduction following infection with an obligate killing pathogen. Social insect queens are special with regard to reproduction and aging, as they outlive conspecific non-reproductive workers. Moreover, in the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior, fecundity increases with queen age. However, it remained unclear whether this reflects negative reproductive senescence or terminal investment in response to approaching death. Here, we test whether queens of C. obscurior react to infection with the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum by an increased egg-laying rate. We show that a fungal infection triggers a reinforced investment in reproduction in queens. This adjustment of the reproductive rate by ant queens is consistent with predictions of the terminal investment hypothesis and is reported for the first time in a social insect.
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spelling pubmed-55415712017-08-08 Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection Giehr, Julia Grasse, Anna V. Cremer, Sylvia Heinze, Jürgen Schrempf, Alexandra R Soc Open Sci Biology (Whole Organism) Infections with potentially lethal pathogens may negatively affect an individual's lifespan and decrease its reproductive value. The terminal investment hypothesis predicts that individuals faced with a reduced survival should invest more into reproduction instead of maintenance and growth. Several studies suggest that individuals are indeed able to estimate their body condition and to increase their reproductive effort with approaching death, while other studies gave ambiguous results. We investigate whether queens of a perennial social insect (ant) are able to boost their reproduction following infection with an obligate killing pathogen. Social insect queens are special with regard to reproduction and aging, as they outlive conspecific non-reproductive workers. Moreover, in the ant Cardiocondyla obscurior, fecundity increases with queen age. However, it remained unclear whether this reflects negative reproductive senescence or terminal investment in response to approaching death. Here, we test whether queens of C. obscurior react to infection with the entomopathogenic fungus Metarhizium brunneum by an increased egg-laying rate. We show that a fungal infection triggers a reinforced investment in reproduction in queens. This adjustment of the reproductive rate by ant queens is consistent with predictions of the terminal investment hypothesis and is reported for the first time in a social insect. The Royal Society Publishing 2017-07-05 /pmc/articles/PMC5541571/ /pubmed/28791176 http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170547 Text en © 2017 The Authors. http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Published by the Royal Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/, which permits unrestricted use, provided the original author and source are credited.
spellingShingle Biology (Whole Organism)
Giehr, Julia
Grasse, Anna V.
Cremer, Sylvia
Heinze, Jürgen
Schrempf, Alexandra
Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title_full Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title_fullStr Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title_full_unstemmed Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title_short Ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
title_sort ant queens increase their reproductive efforts after pathogen infection
topic Biology (Whole Organism)
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC5541571/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/28791176
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.170547
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