Grants and Contracts Details
Description
Undertaking behavior is essential for social insects that live in large colonies with enclosed nests
because it reduces exposure to pathogens. Dead nestmates are often recognized by a postmortem
change in a chemical signature. Injuries can occur when co-occurring species, including
congeneric competitors, share the same habitat. After death these intruders may be treated as
dead nestmates (if the chemical signature of death is identical), continue to be treated as intruders
(if they are not differentiated from living individuals), or in a novel manner related to a discrete
risk from heterospecific individuals. Our preliminary research showed that Reticulitermes
flavipes, one of the most destructive termites, showed distinctively different undertaking
responses toward dead termite workers from various origins. The overall goal of this study is to
gain a better understanding of the chemical cues eliciting undertaking process in termites.
"Increased death cues" and "diminished vital sign" are the two working hypotheses underlying
the corpse recognition. Although the nature and property are distinctively different, deathrecognition
chemicals do share one commonality - they are death time-dependent, i.e., existing
surface chemicals such as cuticle hydrocarbons can serve as "vital signs" which diminishes
within the first hour of death, whereas, newly synthesized fatty acid based “death cues” needs
time to produce and typically increase within the first 24 h of death. To test extant working
hypotheses, we will examine the composition and temporal changes of the chemical signatures
associated with dead termites. In addition, we also would like to learn more about the differential
responses between termite workers and soldiers during the undertaking processes. We believe
that such discrepancy is likely the result of division of lab in eusocial animals, and we will test
this hypothesis by challenging R. flavipes colony with dead nestmates and non-nestmate corpses
from a congeneric species R. virginicus.
Status | Finished |
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Effective start/end date | 7/1/13 → 6/30/15 |
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