Ants avoid superinfections by performing risk-adjusted sanitary care.

ABSTRACT: Being cared for when sick is a benefit of sociality that can reduce disease and improve survival of group members. However, individuals providing care risk contracting infectious diseases themselves. If they contract a low pathogen dose, they may develop low-level infections that do not cause disease but still affect host immunity by either decreasing or increasing the host's vulnerability to subsequent infections. Caring for contagious individuals can thus significantly alter the future disease susceptibility of caregivers. Using ants and their fungal pathogens as a model system, we tested if the altered disease susceptibility of experienced caregivers, in turn, affects their expression of sanitary care behavior. We found that low-level infections contracted during sanitary care had prote

SUBMITTER: Konrad M 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5856517 | biostudies-literature | 2018 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature