Journal
JOURNAL OF INSECT PHYSIOLOGY
Volume 70, Issue -, Pages 59-66Publisher
PERGAMON-ELSEVIER SCIENCE LTD
DOI: 10.1016/j.jinsphys.2014.09.002
Keywords
Allometry; Caste differentiation; Division of labor; Leaf-cutting ants; Nestmate recognition
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Funding
- Danish National Research Foundation
- Freia grant from the Faculty of Science, University of Copenhagen
- Marie Curie Reintegration Grant
- German Academic Exchange Service (DAAD)
- Helsinki Centre of Excellence in Biological Interactions [251337]
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A key feature for the success of social insects is division of labour, allowing colony members to specialize on different tasks. Nest defence is a defining task for social insects since it is crucial for colony integrity. A particularly impressive and well-known case of worker specialization in complex hymenopteran societies is found in leaf-cutting ants of the genera Atta and Acromyrmex. We hypothesized that three morphological worker castes of Acromyrmex echinatior differ in their likelihood to attack intruders, and show that major workers are more aggressive towards non-nestmate workers than medium and minor workers. Moreover, minors do not discriminate between nestmate and non-nestmate brood, while larger workers do. We further show that A. echinatior ants use cuticular chemical compounds for nestmate recognition. We took advantage of the natural variation in the cuticular compounds between colonies to investigate the proximate factors that may have led to the observed caste differences in aggression. We infer that major workers differ from medium workers in their general propensity to attack intruders (the action component of the nestmate recognition system), while minors seem to be less sensitive to foreign odours (perception component). Our results highlight the importance of proximate mechanisms underlying social insect behaviour, and encourage an appreciation of intra-colony variation when analysing colony-level traits such as nest defence. (C) 2014 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.
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