Subterranean Termite Social Alarm and Hygienic Responses to Fungal Pathogens.

ABSTRACT: In social insects, alerting nestmates to the presence of a pathogen should be critical for limiting its spread and initiating social mechanisms of defense. Here we show that subterranean termites use elevated vibratory alarm behavior to help prevent fatal fungal infections. The elevated alarm leads to elevated social hygiene. This requires that termites coalesce so that they can groom each other's cuticular surfaces of contaminating conidial spores. Groups of 12 Reticulitermes flavipes workers varied in their response when immersed in conidia solutions of nine different strains of Metarhizium. Pathogen alarm displays of short 2-7-second bursts of rapid longitudinal oscillatory movement (LOM), observed over 12 min following a fungal challenge, were positively correlated with the time that w

SUBMITTER: Bulmer MS 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC6723859 | biostudies-literature | 2019 Aug

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature