D3034: Adaptive behaviors of acorn ants in response to pathogen exposures

In the world of social insects, an intriguing phenomenon is the collection of behaviors known as social immunity. These behaviors have arisen in a response to disease pressure that are especially concerning in a large complex social environment. One of those behaviors is self-medication, recently observed in certain ant species, where external and often toxic substances are utilized to alleviate the harmful effects of pathogens. An acorn ant, Temnothorax curvispinosus, were used in this study in response to generalist entomopathogenic fungal exposure Beauveria bassiana. Specifically, the feeding preferences of non-infected and infected colonies were observed, where ants had a choice to consume different types of dites: (i) regular food, (ii) regular food mixed with a reactive oxygen species (ROS), and (iii) regular food containing a bacteria isolated from the T. curvispinosus ant gut that produces reactive oxygen species. Our preliminary data show that T. curvispinosus ants can distinguish food with ROS and that this type of food is consumed in a response to fungal pathogen infections.