EPIDEMICSonCHIP:
EPIDEMICS in ant colonies ON a CHIP
We studied how individual sanitary care decisions of ants synergise to collective hygiene at the colony level, and how epidemics are prevented.
By being able to target the currently most infectious colony members for grooming, ants can very effectively remove the infectious sources from the colony. Moreover, ants that have recently been groomed by others are suppressed from grooming others. Together, these dynamic individual grooming choices and social feedback mechanisms drastically reduces the colony’s pathogen load and hence the risk of disease and epidemic outbreaks.
We could further show that these behavioural changes act in combination with very long-term physiological protection, since transgenerational immunisation from the queen to her offspring can persist for up to one year. In case all these hygiene actions fail and colony members develop disease, they altruistically signal their disease state by a “sick smell” that alerts the workers to treat the infection by destructive disinfection. This hygienic suicide by fatally infected colony members results from the unconditional cooperation in the superorganism.
Key publications arising from this funding
