Alarm Pheromone Composition and Behavioral Activity in Fungus-Growing Ants
Alarm Pheromone Composition and Behavioral Activity in Fungus-Growing Ants
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真菌生长蚂蚁的警报信息素组成和行为活动
DOI：
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发表时间：
2017
影响因子：
2.3
通讯作者：
W. Hughes
中科院分区：
文献类型：
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作者：
V. Norman;Thomas M. Butterfield;F. Drijfhout;K. Tasman;W. Hughes
化学交流是整个动物界占主导地位的交流方式，在群居动物中尤其重要，因为在这种动物中，来自捕食或其他危险的交流威胁可以对群体生存产生重大影响。特别是群居昆虫，进化出了许多专门用来发出警报的信息素化合物。据预测，警报线索的种间差异选择很少，因为个体可以从识别种间和同种线索中受益，因此，警报线索通常不被认为用于物种或筑巢伙伴的识别。在这里，我们研究了七种真菌生长蚂蚁(Attini)的报警信息素的组成，包括基础种和衍生种，并考察了Acromyrmex切叶蚂蚁对报警信息素的行为反应，Acromyrmex切叶蚂蚁是高度研究的Atta切叶蚂蚁的姐妹属。我们发现，在整个物种系统发育过程中，警报信息素的组成存在惊人的种间差异。有趣的是，报警信息素的活性成分在两个切叶蚂蚁属之间是不同的。此外，与以前对Atta的研究相比，我们发现不同形态种级对Acromyrmex报警信息素的反应没有差异，但我们确实发现了不同年龄段之间的反应差异。结果表明，社会性昆虫分支中警报通信和信号的进化可能出人意料地复杂，需要进一步研究以了解不同警报信息素化合物的进化是否具有适应性。
Chemical communication is a dominant method of communication throughout the animal kingdom and can be especially important in group-living animals in which communicating threats, either from predation or other dangers, can have large impacts on group survival. Social insects, in particular, have evolved a number of pheromonal compounds specifically to signal alarm. There is predicted to be little selection for interspecific variation in alarm cues because individuals may benefit from recognizing interspecific as well as conspecific cues and, consequently, alarm cues are not normally thought to be used for species or nestmate recognition. Here, we examine the composition of the alarm pheromones of seven species of fungus-growing ants (Attini), including both basal and derived species and examine the behavioral responses to alarm pheromone of Acromyrmex leaf-cutting ants, the sister genus to the highly studied Atta leaf-cutting ants. We find surprisingly high interspecific variation in alarm pheromone composition across the attine phylogeny. Interestingly, the active component of the alarm pheromone was different between the two leaf-cutting ant genera. Furthermore, in contrast to previous studies on Atta, we found no differences among morphological castes in their responses to alarm pheromone in Acromyrmex but we did find differences in responses among putative age classes. The results suggest that the evolution of alarm communication and signaling within social insect clades can be unexpectedly complex and that further work is warranted to understand whether the evolution of different alarm pheromone compounds is adaptive.