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Division of Labor in Anti-Parasite Defense Strategies in Ant Colonies Claudia Missoh

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Division of Labor in Anti-Parasite Defense Strategies in Ant Colonies Claudia Missoh Division of labor in anti-parasite defense strategies in ant colonies Claudia Missoh To cite this version: Claudia Missoh. Division of labor in anti-parasite defense strategies in ant colonies. Ecology, envi- ronment. Université Pierre et Marie Curie - Paris VI; Universität Regensburg, 2014. English. NNT : 2014PA066450. tel-01127578 HAL Id: tel-01127578 https://tel.archives-ouvertes.fr/tel-01127578 Submitted on 7 Mar 2015 HAL is a multi-disciplinary open access L’archive ouverte pluridisciplinaire HAL, est archive for the deposit and dissemination of sci- destinée au dépôt et à la diffusion de documents entific research documents, whether they are pub- scientifiques de niveau recherche, publiés ou non, lished or not. The documents may come from émanant des établissements d’enseignement et de teaching and research institutions in France or recherche français ou étrangers, des laboratoires abroad, or from public or private research centers. publics ou privés. Université Pierre et Marie Curie Graduate school: ED227 Sciences de la Nature et de l’Homme : évolution et écologie Research unit: Institut d'Écologie et des Sciences de l'Environnement Research team: Interactions Sociales dans l’Évolution Division of labor in anti-parasite defense strategies in ant colonies. Claudia Westhus PhD thesis in Ecology and Evolutionary Biology Directed by Claudie Doums (Directeur d’études EPHE) and Sylvia Cremer (Assistant Professor) Publicly presented and defended 17.12.2014 Jury members: BOULAY, Raphaёl Professor, Université François-Rabelais, Tours, France rapporteur BROWN, Mark JF Professor, Royal Holloway University of London, Egham, United examinator Kingdom CREMER, Sylvia Assistant Professor, Institute of Science and Technology Austria, thesis supervisor Kosterneuburg, Austria DOUMS, Claudie Directeur d’études EPHE, Muséum national d'Histoire naturelle, thesis supervisor Paris, France MAIBECHE-COISNÉ, Professor, Université Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France president of the Martine jury MORET, Yannick Chargé de Recherche CNRS (HDR), Université de Bourgogne, rapporteur Dijon, France TABLE OF CONTENTS 1. ABSTRACT 3 2. RÉSUMÉ 5 3. INTRODUCTION 7 3.1 Disease resistance in social insects 7 3.1.1 Individual physiological immune defenses 8 3.1.2 Collective immune defenses 9 3.2 Division of labor in social insect colonies 11 3.3 Division of labor in disease resistance and causes of interindividual variability in the workforce 12 3.3.1 Genetic variability 14 3.3.2 Phenotypic variability 16 3.4 Aims of the thesis 20 3.5 The study systems 21 3.5.1 Platythyrea punctata 21 3.5.2 Cataglyphis velox 22 3.5.3 Metarhizium robertsii 24 4. CHAPTER 1: Increased grooming after repeated brood care provides sanitary benefits in a clonal ant. 26 5. CHAPTER 2: Necrophoresis is not everything: cadaver groomings and intranidal transports in the ant Cataglyphis velox. 37 1 6. CHAPTER 3: Are worker size and phenoloxidase activity of Cataglyphis velox workers genetically determined? 62 7. CONCLUSIONS AND PERSPECTIVES 85 7.1 What are the benefits of interindividual variation in immune investment? 85 7.1.1 Behavioral performance of sanitary tasks 85 3.1.2 Physiological immune investment 87 7.2 Potential costs of interindividual variation 88 7.3 The modulation of sanitary division of labor and the costs and benefits of helping 89 7.4 Who is expected to invest more heavily into immune defense? 91 7.5 Nature versus nurture: phenotypic plasticity in immune defense mechanisms 92 7.6 When is experience-modulated behavioral plasticity expected to occur? 94 7.7 Empirical difficulties to analyze proximate mechanisms contributing to interindividual variation in immune defense 97 8. REFERENCES 100 9. ACKNOWLEDGMENTS 138 10. AFFIDAVIT 140 2 1. ABSTRACT Division of labor is a key characteristic of social insects and contributes to their ecological success. Especially in disease defense, the intra-colony partitioning of sanitary work can reduce disease transmission, keep nestmates available for other tasks and reduce costs associated with sanitary task performance (i.e. at the behavioral and physiological level). Factors internal and external to the individual affecting sanitary task allocation are not well known and most studies investigated genetic differences between workers performing behavioral sanitary work. In the first two studies I addressed whether individual experience (through repeated exposure to a sanitary hazard or performance of the task) can generate interindividual differences in the performance of behavioral sanitary tasks. Repeated parasite exposure is a common threat in colonies of social insects, posing selection pressures on colony members to respond with improved disease-defense performance. In the clonal ant Platythyrea punctata, I tested whether experience gained by repeated tending of low-level fungus-exposed (Metarhizium robertsii) larvae alters the performance of sanitary brood care. I found that ants trained both with sham- and fungus-treated larvae groomed the brood longer than naive ants. Increased grooming of fungus-treated larvae resulted in more effective fungal removal, thus making trained ants better caretakers under parasite attack of the colony. Decomposing cadavers pose a sanitary risk to social insect colonies, necessitating cadaver management. In the second study I investigated whether cadaver management (i.e. cadaver grooming and transports) is divided among workers and task allocation affected by recent individual experience or worker size in the polymorphic and polygynous ant Cataglyphis velox. Many individuals performed cadaver management infrequently and few individuals dominated task performance. Our results suggested low division of labor for cadaver grooming and transport and a reduced modulation of these behaviors by recurrent exposure to nestmate cadavers. Polyandry increases the diversity of group members and thereby favours division of labor within the colony. Colonies with increased genetic diversity can also be more resistant towards disease, but the mechanisms underlying increased disease resistance are not well understood. I analyzed in C. velox whether patriline differences among workers could affect their investment into the immune enzyme phenoloxidase. I did neither find heritability for this trait, nor for worker size. Environmental determination of variation in worker size could be advantageous with respect to division of labor, by permitting colonies to adapt worker size ratios to changing conditions if worker size predicts task performance. Environmental determination of the level of phenoloxidase might confer increased disease defense only to individuals performing the riskiest tasks within the colony and thereby limiting costs of immune investment at the colony level. My work suggests that individual experience may influence the performance of sanitary tasks and that tasks may vary in their degree of plasticity. It further demonstrates the importance of future research effort to understand the 3 underlying mechanisms of interindividual variability and the benefits and costs associated with increased nestmate diversity. Key words: ecological immunology, division of labor, phenotypic plasticity, experience, brood care, parasite exposure, cadaver management, phenoloxidase, polyandry, heritability, Platythyrea punctata, Metarhizium robertsii, Cataglyphis velox 4 2. RÉSUMÉ La division du travail est une caractéristique clé chez les insectes sociaux et contribue à leur succès écologique. En ce qui concerne les tâches sanitaires, la division du travail au sein d’une colonie peut permettre de réduire la transmission des maladies, de libérer certaines ouvrières pour d’autres tâches, permettant de diminuer les couts associés à l’exécution des tâches sanitaires (sur le plan comportementale et physiologique). Les facteurs externes et internes aux individus déterminant leur participation aux tâches sanitaires ne sont pas bien connus. La plupart des études portent sur l’importance des différences génétiques entre ouvrières. Dans les deux premières études, j’ai examiné le rôle de l’expérience des individus (par exposition répétée à des déchets sanitaires ou à l’exécution d’une tâche) sur la mise en place de différences interindividuelles dans l’exécution d’une tâche sanitaire comportementale. L’exposition à un parasite est une menace fréquente au sein de colonies d’insectes sociaux. En utilisant la fourmi clonale Platythyrea punctata, j’ai voulu savoir si une exposition répétée des individus à des larves portant une faible quantité de conidiospores du champignon Metarhizium robertsii affectait la performance des soins sanitaires portés au couvain. J’ai trouvé que la durée de nettoyage des larves était plus élevée chez des fourmis entrainées, aux larves exposées ou non exposées au champignon, que chez des fourmis inexpérimentées. Un temps de nettoyage plus élevé améliorait l’élimination des conidiospores. Ainsi les fourmis entrainées pourraient être plus efficaces pour éliminer les conidiospores lors d’une attaque parasitaire de la colonie. La décomposition des cadavres représente un risque sanitaire dans les colonies d’insectes sociaux, nécessitant une gestion de cadavres. Dans la deuxième étude, j’ai étudié la possibilité d’une division du travail dans la gestion des cadavres (c'est-à-dire le nettoyage et le transport) chez les ouvrières de la fourmi polygyne et polymorphe Cataglyphis velox. J’ai plus spécifiquement testé si la propensité d’accomplir ces tâches était en rapport avec une récente expérience individuelle ou
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