快猫短视频

When ants have been exposed to a pathogen, they change the way they build their nests in order to reduce the risk of an epidemic.

at the University of Bristol in the UK and her colleagues demonstrated this by putting groups of 180 black garden ants (Lasius niger), along with larvae and pupae, in containers of soil and monitoring their nest building. Cameras recorded their surface activity while regular CT scans revealed the shape of the nests they excavated within the soil.

After one day, another 20 workers were added to each group. These 20 workers were sprayed either with spores from a disease-causing fungus, or with the same solution without any spores. The researchers then monitored the nests for another six days.

The team found that the nests built by the groups whose extra workers were exposed to fungal spores were more compartmentalised and less densely connected. The workers of these groups dug faster, made more tunnels and created entrances that were further apart than in the nests of ants that weren鈥檛 exposed.

The ants also placed chambers in less central positions within nests. In theory, all these changes should reduce how often ants come into contact with each other as they move around, and thus reduce the risk of infection. The team didn鈥檛 demonstrate this directly, but their computer simulations suggest that these changes in nest architecture reduce each ant鈥檚 chance of contracting a deadly infection by 10 per cent.

In the wild, behavioural changes would work in conjunction with the nest changes to reduce the risk even further, the researchers suggest. For instance, they found that the workers exposed to the fungal spores spent more time working outside the nest 鈥� a form of self-isolation.

Stroeymeyt declined to discuss the results prior to publication in a peer-reviewed journal. In a preprint posted online, the team says it is likely that many other ant species also change their nests in response to infectious diseases 鈥� and we might even be able to learn something from them. 鈥淭he architectural changes highlighted here have been tuned for effectiveness over long evolutionary time and could serve as a proof-of-concept or source of inspiration for human disease interventions,鈥� Stroeymeyt and her colleagues write.

at University of W眉rzburg in Germany agrees. 鈥淚 am sure further studies in this direction could lead to novel insights and inspiration into our own constructions,鈥� he says.

Frank鈥檚 team has shown how ants treat wounded nestmates to prevent infections. 鈥淗ere, [Stroeymeyt and her colleagues] convincingly show another marvellous adaptation against diseases in insect societies,鈥� he says.