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Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages

Parasites and their hosts use different strategies to overcome the defenses of the other, often resulting in an evolutionary arms race. Limited animal studies have explored the differential responses of hosts when challenged by differential parasite loads and different developmental stages of a para...

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Autores principales: Bonadies, Ernesto, Wcislo, William T., Gálvez, Dumas, Hughes, William O.H., Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes
Formato: Online Artículo Texto
Lenguaje:English
Publicado: MDPI 2019
Materias:
Acceso en línea:https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6572560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31060310
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10050130
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author Bonadies, Ernesto
Wcislo, William T.
Gálvez, Dumas
Hughes, William O.H.
Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes
author_facet Bonadies, Ernesto
Wcislo, William T.
Gálvez, Dumas
Hughes, William O.H.
Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes
author_sort Bonadies, Ernesto
collection PubMed
description Parasites and their hosts use different strategies to overcome the defenses of the other, often resulting in an evolutionary arms race. Limited animal studies have explored the differential responses of hosts when challenged by differential parasite loads and different developmental stages of a parasite. The fungus-growing ant Trachymyrmex sp. 10 employs three different hygienic strategies to control fungal pathogens: Grooming the antibiotic-producing metapleural glands (MGs) and planting or weeding their mutualistic fungal crop. By inoculating Trachymyrmex colonies with different parasite concentrations (Metarhizium) or stages (germinated conidia or ungermianted conidia of Metarhizium and Escovopsis), we tested whether ants modulate and change hygienic strategies depending on the nature of the parasite challenge. There was no effect of the concentration of parasite on the frequencies of the defensive behaviors, indicating that the ants did not change defensive strategy according to the level of threat. However, when challenged with conidia of Escovopsis sp. and Metarhizium brunneum that were germinated or not-germinated, the ants adjusted their thygienic behavior to fungal planting and MG grooming behaviors using strategies depending on the conidia germination status. Our study suggests that fungus-growing ants can adjust the use of hygienic strategies based on the nature of the parasites.
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spelling pubmed-65725602019-06-18 Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages Bonadies, Ernesto Wcislo, William T. Gálvez, Dumas Hughes, William O.H. Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes Insects Article Parasites and their hosts use different strategies to overcome the defenses of the other, often resulting in an evolutionary arms race. Limited animal studies have explored the differential responses of hosts when challenged by differential parasite loads and different developmental stages of a parasite. The fungus-growing ant Trachymyrmex sp. 10 employs three different hygienic strategies to control fungal pathogens: Grooming the antibiotic-producing metapleural glands (MGs) and planting or weeding their mutualistic fungal crop. By inoculating Trachymyrmex colonies with different parasite concentrations (Metarhizium) or stages (germinated conidia or ungermianted conidia of Metarhizium and Escovopsis), we tested whether ants modulate and change hygienic strategies depending on the nature of the parasite challenge. There was no effect of the concentration of parasite on the frequencies of the defensive behaviors, indicating that the ants did not change defensive strategy according to the level of threat. However, when challenged with conidia of Escovopsis sp. and Metarhizium brunneum that were germinated or not-germinated, the ants adjusted their thygienic behavior to fungal planting and MG grooming behaviors using strategies depending on the conidia germination status. Our study suggests that fungus-growing ants can adjust the use of hygienic strategies based on the nature of the parasites. MDPI 2019-05-05 /pmc/articles/PMC6572560/ /pubmed/31060310 http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10050130 Text en © 2019 by the authors. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/Licensee MDPI, Basel, Switzerland. This article is an open access article distributed under the terms and conditions of the Creative Commons Attribution (CC BY) license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/) ).
spellingShingle Article
Bonadies, Ernesto
Wcislo, William T.
Gálvez, Dumas
Hughes, William O.H.
Fernández-Marín, Hermógenes
Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title_full Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title_fullStr Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title_full_unstemmed Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title_short Hygiene Defense Behaviors Used by a Fungus-Growing Ant Depend on the Fungal Pathogen Stages
title_sort hygiene defense behaviors used by a fungus-growing ant depend on the fungal pathogen stages
topic Article
url https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC6572560/
https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/31060310
http://dx.doi.org/10.3390/insects10050130
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