Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla
Food storage and morphological divergence between worker and soldier castes in a subterranean myrmicine ant, Carebara perpusilla
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地下蚁蚁 Carebara perpusilla 中工蚁和士兵种姓的食物储存和形态差异
DOI：
10.1080/00222933.2021.1890851
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发表时间：
2020
影响因子：
0.8
通讯作者：
C. Peeters
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Adam Khalife;C. Peeters
摘要食物储备和食物交换帮助昆虫群体调节幼虫发育和在饥饿事件中存活。与黄蜂和蜜蜂不同，蚂蚁不会将食物储存在巢内的外部结构中。因此，一个蚂蚁群体的储存食物的能力大大提高了高度二型工人和士兵的发展，能够在他们的身体内储存食物。Carebara perpusilla（Myrmicinae亚科，Emery，1895年）有地下生活方式和三个等级：工蚁、头部和腹部比例较大的士兵和大型翼后。工蜂很小（1.5毫米长），可以单独捕食微小的节肢动物，如跳虫和成群捕食各种大小的死昆虫。它们不会把大的尸体带回巢穴，而是用土把尸体埋起来，只取出血淋巴和小的固体碎片。此外，一些士兵和处女皇后有一个膨胀的胃和功能作为充实。食用染料显示了作物中脂肪的储存量。使用显微CT可视化辅助解剖，我们比较了工人，士兵和处女皇后的作物及其相当大的扩张能力。我们讨论的形态专业化的蚂蚁不收集蜜露。需要更多地下蚂蚁的自然历史数据来了解觅食和其他行为的适应环境。
ABSTRACT Food reserves and trophallaxis help insect colonies regulate brood development and survive starvation events. Unlike wasps and bees, ants do not store food in external structures within the nest. Therefore, an ant colony’s ability to store food is greatly enhanced by the development of highly dimorphic workers and soldiers that are able to store food within their bodies. Carebara perpusilla (subfamily Myrmicinae, Emery, 1895) has a subterranean lifestyle and three castes: workers, soldiers with a proportionally larger head and gaster, and large winged queens. Workers are minute (1.5 mm long) and can hunt solitarily on tiny arthropods such as springtails and scavenge in groups on dead insects of various sizes. Rather than carrying big corpses to the nest, they bury it with soil and only retrieve haemolymph and small solid pieces. Moreover, some soldiers and virgin queens have a distended gaster and function as repletes. Food dyes revealed the storage of fat in the crop. Using dissections supplemented by micro-CT visualisation, we compared the crop of workers, soldiers and virgin queens and its capacity for considerable expansion. We discuss the morphological specialisation of repletes in ants that do not collect honeydew. Natural history data of more subterranean ants are needed to understand the adaptive context of foraging and other behaviours.