Discrimination mechanism of nest- and non-nestmates in the colonies of eusocial insents

巢友辨别是群居生活在社会昆虫中的重要功能之一。1)在新出现的木蚁中，工蚁辨别蜂后的学习能力取决于个体。辨别能力被发现与大脑中细胞增殖的完成相一致。与这种脑成熟有关，详细分析了蘑菇体的胚后发育。2)对于日本弯曲蜂，非筑巢伙伴产生的角质烃(CHC)混合物会引发强烈的攻击。触角上的特定感受器被鉴定为只对非筑巢的CHC混合物做出反应，这个感受器似乎在检测群体特定的化学信号的外周识别机制中发挥了关键作用。3)在蜜蜂中，识别线索似乎要广泛得多。为了研究可能在大脑中模板更新的过程，研究人员通过与非筑巢的伙伴保持一段时间，将表现出筑巢辨别能力的工作人员暴露在不熟悉的群体环境中。它们参考群体内环境快速改变模板，但在模板更新的早期阶段暂时保留旧模板。4)从鸟巢识别的角度研究了黄蜂和黄蜂的群居寄生行为。

Nestmate discrimination is one of the key function of the colony life in social insects.1)Learning ability of workers to discriminate their queen in the newly-emerged carpenter ant, Camponotus japonicus, depends on the individuals. Discriminative ability was found to coincide with the completion of cell proliferation in the brain. In relation to this brain maturation, postembryonic development of the mushroom bodies was analyzed in detail.2)For Camponotus japonicus, cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) blends produced by non-nestmates elicit strong aggression. The specific sensillum on the antennae was identified to respond only to non-nestmates CHC blends, This sensillum seemed to play a key role for a peripheral recognition mechanism in detecting colony-specific chemical signals.3)In honeybees, recognition cues seem to be much wider. To investigate the process of template renewal probably in the brain, workers showing the nestmate discrimination ability were exposed to unfamiliar colony environments by keeping with non-nestmates for a while. They changed their template rapidly by referring to the inner-colony environment but retain the old template temporally in the early phase of the template renewal. Role of environment-originated odors temporally adsorbed onto the cuticular wax and the fatty acids were also analyzed in detail.4)Social parasitism seen in the hornets, Vespa dybowskii and V.simillima, was investigated from the point of view of nestmate recognition.