Competition through ritualized aggressive interactions between sympatric colonies in solitary foraging neotropical ants.

Understanding the structure of food competition between conspecifics in their natural settings is paramount to addressing more complex questions in ecology, evolution, and conservation. While much research on ants focuses on aggressive food competition between large and foraging trail-using societies, we lack a thorough understanding of inter-colony competition in socially less derived, solitarily foraging species. To fill this gap, we explored the activity of ten neighbouring colonies of the giant ant Dinoponera quadriceps, monitoring 2513 foraging trips of hundreds of workers and all its inter-individual interactions.

Nestmate recognition in the Amazonian stingless bee Melipona paraensis.

Meliponine bees use chemical-based nestmate discrimination to protect their colonies from unrelated intruders. However, species from the Amazon basin are relatively poorly known from this perspective. Here, we investigated Melipona paraensis nestmate discrimination in different contexts (nests vs.

Temporary prey storage along swarm columns of army ants: an adaptive strategy for successful raiding?

While pillaging the brood of other ant colonies, army ants accumulate prey in piles, or caches, along their foraging trails. Widely documented, these structures have historically been considered as by-products of heavy traffic or aborted relocations of the ants' temporary nest, or bivouac. However, we recently observed that caches of the hook-jawed army ant, , appeared independently from heavy traffic or bivouac relocations.

FI: The Fecobiome Initiative.

Animal husbandry has been key to the sustainability of human societies for millennia. Livestock animals, such as cattle, convert plants to protein biomass due to a compartmentalized gastrointestinal tract (GIT) and the complementary contributions of a diverse GIT microbiota, thereby providing humans with meat and dairy products. Research on cattle gut microbial symbionts has mainly focused on the rumen (which is the primary fermentation compartment) and there is a paucity of functional insight on the intestinal (distal end) microbiota, where most foodborne zoonotic bacteria reside.

Tandem running by foraging workers in field conditions vary in response to food type, food distance, and environmental conditions.

Ants show collective and individual behavioral flexibility in their response to immediate context, choosing for example between different foraging strategies. In , workers can forage solitarily or recruit and guide nestmates to larger food sources through tandem running. Although considered more ancestral and less efficient than pheromone trail-laying, this strategy is common especially in species with small colony size.

Integrating real-time data analysis into automatic tracking of social insects.

Automatic video tracking has become a standard tool for investigating the social behaviour of insects. The recent integration of computer vision in tracking technologies will probably lead to fully automated behavioural pattern classification within the next few years. However, many current systems rely on offline data analysis and use computationally expensive techniques to track pre-recorded videos.

and Extracts Improve Healthspan of Aging Flies and Provide Protection in A Huntington Disease Model.

In the last decades, the strong increase in the proportion of older people worldwide, and the increased prevalence of age associated degenerative diseases, have put a stronger focus on aging biology. In spite of important progresses in our understanding of the aging process, an integrative view is still lacking and there is still need for efficient anti-aging interventions that could improve healthspan, reduce incidence of age-related disease and, eventually, increase the lifespan. Interestingly, some compounds from traditional medicine have been found to possess anti-oxidative and anti-inflammatory properties, suggesting that they could play a role as anti-aging compounds, although in depth investigations are still scarce.

Why behavioral neuroscience still needs diversity?: A curious case of a persistent need.

In the past few decades, a substantial portion of neuroscience research has moved from studies conducted across a spectrum of animals to reliance on a few species. While this undoubtedly promotes consistency, in-depth analysis, and a better claim to unraveling molecular mechanisms, investing heavily in a subset of species also restricts the type of questions that can be asked, and impacts the generalizability of findings. A conspicuous body of literature has long advocated the need to expand the diversity of animal systems used in neuroscience research.

Reduced foraging investment as an adaptation to patchy food sources: A phasic army ant simulation.

Colonies of several ant species within the subfamily Dorylinae alternate stereotypical discrete phases of foraging and reproduction. Such phasic cycles are thought to be adaptive because they minimize the amount of foraging and the related costs, and at the same time enhance the colony-level ability to rely on patchily distributed food sources. In order to investigate these hypotheses, we use here a simple computational approach to study the population dynamics of two species of virtual ant colonies that differ quantitatively in their foraging investment.

Fighting experience affects fruit fly behavior in a mating context.

In animals, correlations exist among behaviors within individuals, but it is unclear whether experience in a specific functional context can affect behavior across different contexts. Here, we use Drosophila melanogaster to investigate the effects of conflict-induced behavioral modifications on male mating behavior. In D.

Sexual harassment induces a temporary fitness cost but does not constrain the acquisition of environmental information in fruit flies.

Across animals, sexual harassment induces fitness costs for females and males. However, little is known about the cognitive costs involved, i.e.

Ecology of information: social transmission dynamics within groups of non-social insects.

While many studies focus on how animals use public information, the dynamics of information spread and maintenance within groups, i.e. the 'ecology of information', have received little attention.

Genetic distance and age affect the cuticular chemical profiles of the clonal ant Cerapachys biroi.

Although cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) have received much attention from biologists because of their important role in insect communication, few studies have addressed the chemical ecology of clonal species of eusocial insects. In this study we investigated whether and how differences in CHCs relate to the genetics and reproductive dynamics of the parthenogenetic ant Cerapachys biroi. We collected individuals of different ages and subcastes from several colonies belonging to four clonal lineages, and analyzed their cuticular chemical signature.

Epistasis between adults and larvae underlies caste fate and fitness in a clonal ant.

In social species, the phenotype and fitness of an individual depend in part on the genotype of its social partners. However, how these indirect genetic effects affect genotype fitness in competitive situations is poorly understood in animal societies. We therefore studied phenotypic plasticity and fitness of two clones of the ant Cerapachys biroi in monoclonal and chimeric colonies.

Enforcement of reproductive synchrony via policing in a clonal ant.

In insect societies, worker policing controls genetic conflicts between individuals and increases colony efficiency. However, disentangling relatedness from colony-level effects is usually impossible. We studied policing in the parthenogenetic ant Cerapachys biroi, where genetic conflicts are absent due to clonality and reproduction is synchronized through stereotyped colony cycles.