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Quality and quantity: transitions in antimicrobial gland use for parasite defense

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posted on 2023-06-09, 00:32 authored by Christopher Tranter, Hermógenes Fernández-Marín, William HughesWilliam Hughes
Parasites are a major force in evolution, and understanding how host life history affects parasite pressure and investment in disease resistance is a general problem in evolutionary biology. The threat of disease may be especially strong in social animals, and ants have evolved the unique metapleural gland (MG), which in many taxa produce antimicrobial compounds that have been argued to have been a key to their ecological success. However, the importance of the MG in the disease resistance of individual ants across ant taxa has not been examined directly. We investigate experimentally the importance of the MG for disease resistance in the fungus-growing ants, a group in which there is interspecific variation in MG size and which has distinct transitions in life history. We find that more derived taxa rely more on the MG for disease resistance than more basal taxa and that there are a series of evolutionary transitions in the quality, quantity, and usage of the MG secretions, which correlate with transitions in life history. These shifts show how even small clades can exhibit substantial transitions in disease resistance investment, demonstrating that host–parasite relationships can be very dynamic and that targeted experimental, as well as large-scale, comparative studies can be valuable for identifying evolutionary transitions.

History

Publication status

  • Published

File Version

  • Published version

Journal

Ecology and Evolution

ISSN

2045-7758

Publisher

Wiley Open Access

Issue

24

Volume

5

Page range

5857-5868

Department affiliated with

  • Evolution, Behaviour and Environment Publications

Full text available

  • Yes

Peer reviewed?

  • Yes

Legacy Posted Date

2016-03-11

First Open Access (FOA) Date

2016-03-11

First Compliant Deposit (FCD) Date

2016-03-11

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