Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies

Csata E, Perez-Escudero A, Laury E, Leitner H, Latil G, Heinze J, Simpson S, Cremer S, Dussutour A. 2024. Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies. Current Biology. 34(4), 902–909.e6.

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Author
Csata, Eniko; Perez-Escudero, Alfonso; Laury, Emmanuel; Leitner, HannaISTA; Latil, Gerard; Heinze, Juerge; Simpson, Stephen; Cremer, SylviaISTA ; Dussutour, Audrey
Department
Abstract
In animals, parasitic infections impose significant fitness costs.1,2,3,4,5,6 Infected animals can alter their feeding behavior to resist infection,7,8,9,10,11,12 but parasites can manipulate animal foraging behavior to their own benefits.13,14,15,16 How nutrition influences host-parasite interactions is not well understood, as studies have mainly focused on the host and less on the parasite.9,12,17,18,19,20,21,22,23 We used the nutritional geometry framework24 to investigate the role of amino acids (AA) and carbohydrates (C) in a host-parasite system: the Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, and the entomopathogenic fungus, Metarhizium brunneum. First, using 18 diets varying in AA:C composition, we established that the fungus performed best on the high-amino-acid diet 1:4. Second, we found that the fungus reached this optimal diet when given various diet pairings, revealing its ability to cope with nutritional challenges. Third, we showed that the optimal fungal diet reduced the lifespan of healthy ants when compared with a high-carbohydrate diet but had no effect on infected ants. Fourth, we revealed that infected ant colonies, given a choice between the optimal fungal diet and a high-carbohydrate diet, chose the optimal fungal diet, whereas healthy colonies avoided it. Lastly, by disentangling fungal infection from host immune response, we demonstrated that infected ants foraged on the optimal fungal diet in response to immune activation and not as a result of parasite manipulation. Therefore, we revealed that infected ant colonies chose a diet that is costly for survival in the long term but beneficial in the short term—a form of collective self-medication.
Publishing Year
Date Published
2024-02-26
Journal Title
Current Biology
Publisher
Elsevier
Acknowledgement
We are sincerely grateful to the referees for their valuable comments and suggestions, which helped us to improve the paper. We are thankful to Jorgen Eilenberg and Nicolai V. Meyling for the fungal strain, to Simon Tragust, Abel Bernadou, and Brian Lazarro for insightful discussions, to Iago Sanmartín-Villar, Léa Briard, Céline Maitrel, and Nolwenn Rissen for their help with the experiments. Furthermore, we thank Anna V. Grasse for help with the immune gene expression analyses. We thank Sergio Ibarra for creating the graphical abstract. E.C. was supported by a Fyssen Foundation grant and the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation. A.D. was supported by the CNRS.
Volume
34
Issue
4
Page
902-909.e6
ISSN
eISSN
IST-REx-ID

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Csata E, Perez-Escudero A, Laury E, et al. Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies. Current Biology. 2024;34(4):902-909.e6. doi:10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.017
Csata, E., Perez-Escudero, A., Laury, E., Leitner, H., Latil, G., Heinze, J., … Dussutour, A. (2024). Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies. Current Biology. Elsevier. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.017
Csata, Eniko, Alfonso Perez-Escudero, Emmanuel Laury, Hanna Leitner, Gerard Latil, Juerge Heinze, Stephen Simpson, Sylvia Cremer, and Audrey Dussutour. “Fungal Infection Alters Collective Nutritional Intake of Ant Colonies.” Current Biology. Elsevier, 2024. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.017.
E. Csata et al., “Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies,” Current Biology, vol. 34, no. 4. Elsevier, p. 902–909.e6, 2024.
Csata E, Perez-Escudero A, Laury E, Leitner H, Latil G, Heinze J, Simpson S, Cremer S, Dussutour A. 2024. Fungal infection alters collective nutritional intake of ant colonies. Current Biology. 34(4), 902–909.e6.
Csata, Eniko, et al. “Fungal Infection Alters Collective Nutritional Intake of Ant Colonies.” Current Biology, vol. 34, no. 4, Elsevier, 2024, p. 902–909.e6, doi:10.1016/j.cub.2024.01.017.
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