Emergency measures: Adaptive response to pathogen intrusion in the ant nest.

Ants have developed prophylactic and hygienic behaviours in order to limit risks of pathogenic outbreaks inside their nest, which are often called social immunity. Here, we test whether ants can adapt the "social immune response" to the level of pathogenic risk in the colony. We challenged Myrmica rubra colonies with dead nestmates that had either died from being frozen or from infection by the fungus Metarhizium anisopliae.