Disease prevention and resistance in social insects: modeling the survival consequences of immunity,hygienic behavior,and colony organization |
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Authors: | Nina H Fefferman James F A Traniello Rebeca B Rosengaus II" target="_blank">Daniel V CalleriII |
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Institution: | (1) Department of Public Health and Family Medicine, Tufts University School of Medicine, Boston, MA 02111, USA;(2) Department of Biology, Boston University, 5 Cummington Street, Boston, MA 02215, USA;(3) Department of Biology, Northeastern University, 134 Mugar Life Science Building, Boston, MA 02115-5000, USA;(4) Center for Discrete Mathematics and Theoretical Computer Science (DIMACS), Rutgers University, 96 Frelinghuysen Road, Piscataway, NJ 08854-8018, USA |
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Abstract: | Understanding the origin of disease resistance in social insects is difficult due to the lack of well-established phylogenies
of presocial and eusocial species and the absence of extant basal and intermediate forms. Moreover, comprehensive accounts
of infection-control traits in social insect lineages are not available. Therefore, to explore the evolution of pathogen control
in social insects we used cellular automata models to analyze the efficacy of immunity and nest hygiene, which we assumed
were basal traits, and allogrooming, which likely followed the transition to eusociality, and their interactions with colony
demography and patterns of worker spatial distribution. Models showed that nest hygiene provided an immediate survival benefit
and that immunity lowered overall disease susceptibility under both constant and periodic exposure scenarios. Allogrooming
increased survivorship in chronically challenged colonies but also increased pathogen transmission rates under conditions
of periodic exposure. Colonies having demographies biased towards young or old individuals had slightly higher mortality than
those with heterogeneous demographies. The distribution of older individuals relative to the nest center had no significant
effect on susceptibility and provided only a minor survival advantage. Models indicated that nest hygiene and immunity function
on different temporal scales and can interact with demography to lower disease risks. Our results suggest how infection control
systems in social insects could have been built upon the inducible immune defenses and nest hygienic behaviors of solitary
and presocial ancestors and served as important preadaptations to manage disease exposure and transmission in colonies of
eusocial species. |
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Keywords: | Epidemiology Termites Zootermopsis Ants Host/Pathogen evolution |
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