ArticleBiology letters2013
Immune-priming in ant larvae: social immunity does not undermine individual immunity.
Article in Biology letters, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 14 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
14 citing papers in PubMed.
- Immune priming of honey bees protects against a major microsporidian pathogen.Pest management science · 2025Article
- Current insights into insect immune memory.eLife · 2025Review
- Early queen infection shapes developmental dynamics and induces long-term disease protection in incipient ant colonies.Ecology letters · 2022Article
- Article
- Review
- The more the merrier: Conspecific density improves performance of gregarious larvae and reduces susceptibility to a pupal parasitoid.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Pathogen-induced maternal effects result in enhanced immune responsiveness across generations.Ecology and evolution · 2017Article
- Diversity and Transmission of Gut Bacteria inFrontiers in microbiology · 2017Article
- Insect immunology and hematopoiesis.Developmental and comparative immunology · 2016Review
- Genetic diversity confers colony-level benefits due to individual immunity.Biology letters · 2016Article
- Scrutinizing the immune defence inventory of Camponotus floridanus applying total transcriptome sequencing.BMC genomics · 2015Article
- Anti-pathogen protection versus survival costs mediated by an ectosymbiont in an ant host.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2015Article
- Immune priming and pathogen resistance in ant queens.Ecology and evolution · 2014Article
- Ant colonies prefer infected over uninfected nest sites.PloS one · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Social insects deploy numerous strategies against pathogens including behavioural, biochemical and immunological responses. While past research has revealed that adult social insects can generate immunity, few studies have focused on the immune function during an insect's early life stages. We hypothesized that larvae of the black carpenter ant Camponotus pennsylvanicus vaccinated with heat-killed Serratia marcescens should be less susceptible to a challenge with an active and otherwise lethal dose of the bacterium. We compared the in vivo benefits of prior vaccination of young larvae relative to naive and ringer injected controls. Regardless of colony of origin, survival parameters of vaccinated individuals following a challenge were significantly higher than those of the other two treatments. Results support the hypothesis that ant larvae exhibit immune-priming. Based on these results, we can infer that brood care by workers does not eliminate the need for individual-level immunological responses. Focusing on these early stages of development within social insect colonies can start addressing the complex dynamics between physiological (individual level) and social (collective) immunity.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.