The queens in nests of social bugs, such as ants, bees, and wasps, are thought about the genuine personification of expertise in the animal kingdom. The typical understanding is that the queen’s only job is to lay eggs– which this characteristic is an intrinsic characteristic, not affected by external elements. On the other hand, current research study carried out at Johannes Gutenberg University Mainz (JGU) has actually shown that in specific ant nests the social environment can play a vital function in forming the behavioral expertise of the queens. “With regard to the ant types we studied, it is social elements that manage whether queens end up being specialized or not. Our findings challenge the extensively accepted idea of social insect queens as naturally specialized egg-laying devices,” specified Dr. Romain Libbrecht.
The research study was performed by the Reproduction, Nutrition, and Behavior in Insect Societies group at JGU under the guidance of Dr. Romain Libbrecht, an evolutionary biologist. The matching paper has actually just recently been released in Practical EcologyDr. Romain Libbrecht presently operates at the Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique (CNRS) in the Insect Biology Research Institute of the University of Tours.
Principle of insect societies as superorganisms including specialized people
It is typically presumed that social pest nests include queens that monopolize recreation and sterilized employees accountable for all non-reproduction-related jobs, such as the care of the brood, i.e., eggs and larvae. Libbrecht’s group now questioned this fundamental presumption. They concentrated on ant types where the queens discovered brand-new nests alone and without the aid of employees. “Interestingly, these founding queens are not yet focused on regards to their habits at this phase of their lives,” Libbrecht mentioned. “They themselves presume all jobs in the nest, such as brood care, to make sure effective production of the very first generation of employees.”
In their experiments, Libbrecht’s group studied the black garden ant Lasius niger that is belonging to Germany. They discovered the social environment to be a core consider identifying the behavioral expertise of establishing queens. “The intro of employees in the nests of establishing queens reduced the natural predisposition of the queens to take care of their brood themselves. And, alternatively, when we separated queens concentrated on egg-laying from their employees, they quickly went back to the brood care habits observed when it comes to establishing queens, even after several years of expertise.”
Modification of the accepted view of the department of labor in insect societies
Libbrecht stressed that the habits observed throughout the research study challenges the standard view of social insect queens as being fundamentally focused on egg production. Rather, the findings show that the existence of employees not just activates the egg-laying expertise of queens however likewise actively preserves it in developed nests. The discovery of such social control of queen expertise might improve our understanding of the performance of insect societies and their department of labor.
Romain Libbrecht was head of the Reproduction,
