Have you ever been perplexed by the mysterious disappearance of ants from your trap? It’s because certain danger-signaling pheromones activate a specific part of the ants’ brain and can change the behavior of an entire nest, according to a study published in the journal Cell on June 14.
“Ants have evolved extremely complex olfactory systems compared to other insects, which allows them to communicate using many different types of pheromones that can mean different things,” says Taylor Hart, the lead author from The Rockefeller University. This research confirms that ants have their own unique communication hub in their brains, which can interpret alarm pheromones, also known as “danger signals.” This brain section is more advanced than that of some other insects, like honeybees that rely on many different brain parts to coordinate in response to a single pheromone.
“All panic-inducing alarm pheromones feed into a sensory hub in the ant brain,” says Daniel Kronauer, the corresponding author from The Rockefeller University. The researchers used an engineered protein called GCaMP to scan the brain activity of clonal raider ants that were exposed to danger signals. The resulting fluorescence showed that only a small section of the ants’ brains lit up in response to danger signals. Despite this, ants showed immediate and complex behaviors, which primarily involved fleeing, evacuating the nest, and transporting offspring to a safer location. These behaviors were named the “panic response” because of the actions and instincts involved.
Ants of different species communicate through various pheromones to pass different messages. For instance, clonal raider ants always showcase panic responses as their alarm behavior because they aim to get away and survive. They cannot risk a lot of individuals since they typically live in small colonies consisting of ten to hundreds of individuals. In contrast, army ants, the cousins of the clonal raider ants, have massive colonies of hundreds of thousands or millions of individuals and can be much more aggressive. For the purpose of this study, researchers selected clonal raider ants as a species because they are docile and easy to control.
The researchers believe that once they understand the neural differences between castes, sexes, and roles in ants, they can comprehend how different ant brains process the same signals. “We can start to look at how these sensory representations are similar or different between ants,” says Hart. “We’re looking at division of labor. Why do individuals that are genetically the same assume different tasks in the colony? How does this division of labor work?” Kronauer continues.
More Information:
Daniel J. C. Kronauer, Sparse and stereotyped encoding implicates a core glomerulus for ant alarm behavior, Cell (2023). DOI: 10.1016/j.cell.2023.05.025. www.cell.com/cell/fulltext/S0092-8674(23)00544-5
Journal Information: Cell
Citation: Ants have a specialized communication processing center that has not been found in other social insects (2023, June 14) retrieved 14 June 2023 from https://phys.org/news/2023-06-ants-specialized-communication-center-social.html
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