Biomarkers in a socially exchanged /fluid reflect colony maturity, behavior, and distributed metabolism.

ABSTRACT: In cooperative systems exhibiting division of labor, such as microbial communities, multicellular organisms, and social insect colonies, individual units share costs and benefits through both task specialization and exchanged materials. Socially exchanged fluids, like seminal fluid and milk, allow individuals to molecularly influence conspecifics. Many social insects have a social circulatory system, where food and endogenously produced molecules are transferred mouth-to-mouth (stomodeal trophallaxis), connecting all the individuals in the society. To understand how these endogenous molecules relate to colony life, we used quantitative proteomics to investigate the trophallactic fluid within colonies of the carpenter ant Camponotus floridanus. We show that different stages of the co

SUBMITTER: Hakala SM 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8608388 | biostudies-literature | 2021 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature