Swapping spit helps ants share metabolic labor

Date:
November 16, 2021
Source:
eLife
Summary:
Ant colonies use fluids passed mouth-to-mouth to create a
colony-wide metabolism, shows a new study.



FULL STORY ==========================================================================
Ant colonies use fluids passed mouth-to-mouth to create a colony-wide metabolism, shows a study published in eLife.


==========================================================================
The discovery is the latest to suggest that social insect colonies
function in a similar way to a single organism made up of many individuals
and provides new insights on how they accomplish this.

"Individual ants have two stomachs -- one for digesting their own food and another one that comes first, a 'social stomach' for storing fluids that
they share with other ants in their colony. These fluid exchanges allow
ants to share food and other important proteins that the ants themselves produce," says senior author Adria LeBoeuf, Assistant Professor and
leader of the Laboratory of Social Fluids at the Department of Biology, University of Fribourg, Switzerland.

"To help us understand why ants share these fluids, we explored whether
the proteins they exchange are linked to an individual's role in the
colony or the colony's life-cycle," adds lead author Sanja Hakala,
a postdoctoral fellow at the University of Fribourg.

The team analysed all of the ant-produced proteins found in the social
stomachs of individual ants. They then compared how the proteins varied depending on whether the ant was a forager or a nurse caring for the
colony's young. They also investigated if the proteins varied depending
on whether the ants were part of a new colony or a more established one.

They identified proteins that could be used to determine both the
individual's role and the age of their colony. For example, they found
that members of more mature ant colonies had more nutrient storage
proteins necessary for the growth and metamorphosis of their young,
in comparison to members of newly founded ant colonies.

Nurse ants that cared for the young in their colony also had more
anti-aging proteins in their stomachs. This suggests that colony members
may pool these life-extending proteins in their nurses to help ensure
that they survive to look after the next generation. "These findings
show that some colony members can do metabolic labour for the benefit
of others," Hakala says.

The authors say that more studies are needed to understand what each
shared protein does for individual ants and the wider colony.

LeBoeuf concludes: "It is hard to measure how metabolic work is shared
between cells. Here, the ants pass things around in a way that we can
easily access what they are sharing. Having a better understanding
of how ants share metabolic labour may help us learn more about
the ways that other creatures, like humans, distribute metabolic
tasks between different tissues or different cells in their bodies." ========================================================================== Story Source: Materials provided by eLife. Note: Content may be edited
for style and length.


========================================================================== Journal Reference:
1. Sanja M Hakala, Marie-Pierre Meurville, Michael Stumpe, Adria
C LeBoeuf.

Biomarkers in a socially exchanged fluid reflect colony maturity,
behavior and distributed metabolism. eLife, 2021; 10 DOI: 10.7554/
eLife.74005 ==========================================================================

Link to news story: https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2021/11/211116111340.htm

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