First Evidence for Slave Rebellion: Enslaved Ant Workers Systematically Kill the Brood of Their Social Parasite Protomognathus americanus

@inproceedings{Achenbach2009FirstEF,
  title={First Evidence for Slave Rebellion: Enslaved Ant Workers Systematically Kill the Brood of Their Social Parasite Protomognathus americanus},
  author={Alexandra Achenbach and Susanne Foitzik},
  booktitle={Evolution; international journal of organic evolution},
  year={2009}
}
During the process of coevolution, social parasites have evolved sophisticated strategies to exploit the brood care behavior of their social hosts. Slave-making ant queens invade host colonies and kill or eject all adult host ants. Host workers, which eclose from the remaining brood, are tricked into caring for the parasite brood. Due to their high prevalence and frequent raids, following which stolen host broods are similarly enslaved, slave-making ants exert substantial selection upon their… 
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43 Citations

Brood exchange experiments and chemical analyses shed light on slave rebellion in ants

Investigation of the acceptance of host and parasite pupae by Temnothorax workers in parasitized and unparasitized colonies found parasite pupae survived better when transferred to sympatric host colonies than to allopatric ones, possibly indicating local adaptation in the parasite P. americanus.

Geographic distribution of the anti-parasite trait “slave rebellion”

This study investigates the presence and expression the slave rebellion trait in four communities, reports its presence in all parasitized communities, document strong variation in its expression between different geographic sites and discusses potential explanations for this observed variation.

Social parasite pressure affects brood discrimination of host species in Temnothorax ants

Do host species evolve a specific response to slave-making ants?

It is shown that workers of the host and of a non-host species in the parasitized site displayed more agonistic behaviors towards parasite than toward non-parasite intruders, and the importance of considering the whole set of potentially interacting species to understand the coevolution between social parasites and their hosts is stressed.

The influence of slavemaking lifestyle, caste and sex on chemical profiles in Temnothorax ants: insights into the evolution of cuticular hydrocarbons

How lifestyle-specific selection can result in convergent evolution of chemical phenotypes is revealed, with workers, for which nest-mate recognition is particularly important, carrying more and longer-chained hydrocarbons and males exhibiting a larger fraction of n-alkanes.

Oh sister, where art thou? Spatial population structure and the evolution of an altruistic defence trait

A simple mathematical model is used to examine whether the small‐scale population structure of the host species could explain the evolution of this potentially altruistic defence trait against slavemaking ants and finds that enslaved host workers are more closely related to host nests within the raiding range of their resident slavemaker nest, than tohost nests outside the raidingrange.

Increased host aggression as an induced defense against slave-making ants

It is demonstrated for the first time an induced defense against slave-making ants: Cues from the slavemaker Protomognathus americanus caused an unspecific but long-lasting behavioral response in Temnothorax host ants, showing the ability of host ants to remember parasite encounters.

Social parasites of ant colonies

This thesis will focus on socially parasitic ants and butterflies and the different ways and mimicries used to be accepted into the colony of their host, are observed.

Cross-fostering by foreign conspecific queens and slave-making workers influences individual- and colony-level personality

It is demonstrated that differences in individuals’ rearing environment can influence both individual- and colony-level personality in multi-level societies.

Cuckoos versus hosts in insects and birds: adaptations, counter‐adaptations and outcomes

An adaptive explanation of co‐evolution between brood parasites and their hosts is proposed, which centres on the relative strength of two opposing processes: strategy‐facilitation, in which one line of host defence promotes the evolution of another form of resistance, and strategy‐blocking, which may relax selection on another so completely that it causes it to decay.

References

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