Seasonal Patterns of Resource Use Within Natural Populations of Burying Beetles.

For organisms in temperate environments, seasonal variation in resource availability and weather conditions exert fluctuating selection pressures on survival and fitness, resulting in diverse adaptive responses. By manipulating resource availability on a local spatial scale, we studied seasonal patterns of resource use within natural populations of burying beetles in a Norfolk woodland. Burying beetles are necrophagous insects that breed on vertebrate carcasses.

Variation in Ants' Chemical Recognition Signals across Vineyard Agroecosystems.

Ant evolutionary success depends mainly on the coordination of colony members, who recognize nestmates based on the cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) profile of their epicuticle. While several studies have examined variations in this crucial factor for colony identity, few have investigated the anthropic impact on CHC profiles, and none have focused on . Here, we surveyed the changes in CHC assemblages across agroecosystems and assessed whether different vineyard management influences these profiles.

Group phenotypic composition drives task performances in ants.

Differences in individual behaviour within a group can give rise to functional dissimilarities between groups, particularly in social animals. However, how individual behavioural phenotypes translate into the group phenotype remains unclear. Here, we investigate whether individual behavioural type affects group performance in a eusocial species, the ant .

Queen fecundity, worker entourage and cuticular chemistry in the ant .

Cooperative breeding entails conflicts over reproductive shares that may be settled in different ways. In ants, where several queens simultaneously reproduce in a colony, both queens and workers may influence the reproductive apportionment and offspring quality. Queens may vary in their intrinsic fecundity, which may influence the size of the worker entourage attending individual queens, and this may eventually dictate the reproductive output of a queen.

Evolution of the neuronal substrate for kin recognition in social Hymenoptera.

In evolutionary terms, life is about reproduction. Yet, in some species, individuals forgo their own reproduction to support the reproductive efforts of others. Social insect colonies for example, can contain up to a million workers that actively cooperate in tasks such as foraging, brood care and nest defence, but do not produce offspring.

Ants act as olfactory bio-detectors of tumours in patient-derived xenograft mice.

Early detection of cancer is critical in medical sciences, as the sooner a cancer is diagnosed, the higher are the chances of recovery. Tumour cells are characterized by specific volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be used as cancer biomarkers. Through olfactory associative learning, animals can be trained to detect these VOCs.

Integrative characterization of genetic and phenotypic differentiation in an ant species complex with strong hierarchical population structure and low dispersal abilities.

Low dispersal, occurrence of asexual reproduction and geographic discontinuity increase genetic differentiation between populations, which ultimately can lead to speciation. In this work, we used a multidisciplinary framework to characterize the genetic and phenotypic differentiation between and within two cryptic ant species with restricted dispersal, Cataglyphis cursor and C. piliscapa and used behavioral experiments to test for reproductive isolation.

Ants detect cancer cells through volatile organic compounds.

Cancer is among the world's leading causes of death. A critical challenge for public health is to develop a noninvasive, inexpensive, and efficient tool for early cancer detection. Cancer cells are characterized by an altered metabolism, producing unique patterns of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) that can be used as cancer biomarkers.

Formic acid modulates latency and accuracy of nestmate recognition in carpenter ants.

Decision-making processes face the dilemma of being accurate or faster, a phenomenon that has been described as speed-accuracy trade-off in numerous studies on animal behaviour. In social insects, discriminating between colony members and aliens is subject to this trade-off as rapid and accurate rejection of enemies is of primary importance for the maintenance and ecological success of insect societies. Recognition cues distinguishing aliens from nestmates are embedded in the cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) layer and vary among colonies.

The Scent of Ant Brood: Caste Differences in Surface Hydrocarbons of Formica exsecta Pupae.

Chemical communication is common across all organisms. Insects in particular use predominantly chemical stimuli in assessing their environment and recognizing their social counterparts. One of the chemical stimuli used for recognition in social insects, such as ants, is the suite of long-chain, cuticular hydrocarbons.

A small number of workers with specific personality traits perform tool use in ants.

Ants use debris as tools to collect and transport liquid food to the nest. Previous studies showed that this behaviour is flexible whereby ants learn to use artificial material that is novel to them and select tools with optimal soaking properties. However, the process of tool use has not been studied at the individual level.

Pheromone components affect motivation and induce persistent modulation of associative learning and memory in honey bees.

Since their discovery in insects, pheromones are considered as ubiquitous and stereotyped chemical messengers acting in intraspecific animal communication. Here we studied the effect of pheromones in a different context as we investigated their capacity to induce persistent modulations of associative learning and memory. We used honey bees, Apis mellifera, and combined olfactory conditioning and pheromone preexposure with disruption of neural activity and two-photon imaging of olfactory brain circuits, to characterize the effect of pheromones on olfactory learning and memory.

Trail pheromone modulates subjective reward evaluation in Argentine ants.

The Argentine ant, , is native to South America but has become one of the most invasive species in the world. These ants heavily rely on trail pheromones for foraging, and previous studies have focused on such signals to develop a strategy for chemical control. Here, we studied the effects of pre-exposure to the trail pheromone on sugar acceptance and olfactory learning in Argentine ants.

Ant cuticular hydrocarbons are heritable and associated with variation in colony productivity.

In social insects, cuticular hydrocarbons function in nest-mate recognition and also provide a waxy barrier against desiccation, but basic evolutionary features, including the heritability of hydrocarbon profiles and how they are shaped by natural selection are largely unknown. We used a new pharaoh ant () laboratory mapping population to estimate the heritability of individual cuticular hydrocarbons, genetic correlations between hydrocarbons, and fitness consequences of phenotypic variation in the hydrocarbons. Individual hydrocarbons had low to moderate estimated heritability, indicating that some compounds provide more information about genetic relatedness and can also better respond to natural selection.

Regulation of Ant Foraging: A Review of the Role of Information Use and Personality.

Animals live in heterogeneous environments where food resources are transient and have to be exploited rapidly. Ants show a wide range of foraging strategies and this activity is tightly regulated irrespective of the mode of recruitment used. Individual foragers base their decision to forage on information received from nestmates (social information).

Chemical Deception and Structural Adaptation in Microdon (Diptera, Syrphidae, Microdontinae), a Genus of Hoverflies Parasitic on Social Insects.

Various organisms, especially arthropods, are able to live as parasites in ant nests and to prey upon ant broods without eliciting any aggressive behaviour in the hosts. Understanding how these intruders are able to break the ants' communication codes in their favour represents a challenging and intriguing evolutionary question. We studied the chemical strategies of three European hoverfly species, Microdon mutabilis (parasitic on Formica cunicularia), M.

Seasonal Variations in Femoral Gland Secretions Reveals some Unexpected Correlations Between Protein and Lipid Components in a Lacertid Lizard.

Animals modulate intraspecific signal shape and intensity, notably during reproductive periods. Signal variability typically follows a seasonal scheme, traceable through the expression of visual, acoustic, chemical and behavioral patterns. The chemical channel is particularly important in lizards, as demonstrated by well-developed epidermal glands in the cloacal region that secrete lipids and proteins recognized by conspecifics.

Ants learn fast and do not forget: associative olfactory learning, memory and extinction in .

Learning is a widespread phenomenon that allows behavioural flexibility when individuals face new situations. However, learned information may lose its value over time. If such a memory endures, it can be deleterious to individuals.

Pheromone-Induced Accuracy of Nestmate Recognition in Carpenter Ants: Simultaneous Decrease in Type I and Type II Errors.

The ecological and evolutionary success of social insects relies on their ability to efficiently discriminate between group members and aliens. Nestmate recognition occurs by phenotype matching, the comparison of the referent (colony) phenotype to the one of an encountered individual. Based on the level of dissimilarity between the two, the discriminator accepts or rejects the target.

Necessary Conditions for Social Transmission of Food Preference Through Feces in the House Mouse, Mus musculus domesticus.

Mice can obtain information about a new food source through olfactory cues of conspecifics and consequently develop an attraction for this diet. The social transmission of food preference (STFP) takes place directly, during an encounter with a conspecific or indirectly, via feces. In indirect STFP, the digestive process can degrade odorant compounds characterizing the food, impairing the matching between feces and food.

Phenotypic correlation between queen and worker brood care supports the role of maternal care in the evolution of eusociality.

Cooperative brood care by siblings, a defining feature of eusociality, is hypothesized to be evolutionarily derived from maternal care via shifts in the timing of the expression of genes underlying maternal care. If sibling and maternal care share a genetic basis, the two behaviors are expected to be genetically and phenotypically correlated. We tested this prediction in the black garden ant by quantifying the brood retrieval rate of queens and their first and later generation worker offspring.

Individual behavioural type and group performance in Formica fusca ants.

The link between individual and group-level behaviour may help understanding cooperation and division of labour in social animals. Despite the recent surge of studies, especially in social insects, the way individual differences translate into group performance remains debated. One hypothesis is that groups may simply differ in the average personality of their members and this would translate into inter-group differences in collective behaviour.

Active explorers show low learning performance in a social insect.

An intriguing question in behavioral biology is whether consistent individual differences (called animal personalities) relate to variation in cognitive performance because commonly measured personality traits may be associated with risk-reward trade-offs. Social insects, whose learning abilities have been extensively characterized, show consistent behavioral variability, both at colony and at individual level. We investigated the possible link between personality traits and learning performance in the carpenter ant .