Intergenerational genotypic interactions drive collective behavioural cycles in a social insect.

ABSTRACT: Many social animals display collective activity cycles based on synchronous behavioural oscillations across group members. A classic example is the colony cycle of army ants, where thousands of individuals undergo stereotypical biphasic behavioural cycles of about one month. Cycle phases coincide with brood developmental stages, but the regulation of this cycle is otherwise poorly understood. Here, we probe the regulation of cycle duration through interactions between brood and workers in an experimentally amenable army ant relative, the clonal raider ant. We first establish that cycle length varies across clonal lineages using long-term monitoring data. We then investigate the putative sources and impacts of this variation in a cross-fostering experiment with four lineages combining devel

SUBMITTER: Jud SL 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9627708 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Nov

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature