ArticleJournal of chemical ecology2013
Post-mortem changes in chemical profile and their influence on corpse removal in ants.
Article in Journal of chemical ecology, 2013. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 18 papers.
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Who cites it
18 citing papers in PubMed, 61 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Phobic responses of bull ants (Myrmecia midas) to odours introduced on their foraging route.Journal of comparative physiology. A, Neuroethology, sensory, neural, and behavioral physiology · 2025Article
- Social organization of necrophoresis: insights into disease risk management in ant societies.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Imported Fire Ants Discard Cricket Eggs.Insects · 2024Article
- Desert Ant (Insects · 2024Article
- Non-lethal fungal infection could reduce aggression towards strangers in ants.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Both age and social environment shape the phenotype of ant workers.Scientific reports · 2023Article
- Suitability of drone olfactory sensitivity as a selection trait for Varroa-resistance in honeybees.Scientific reports · 2021Article
- The Exocrine Chemistry of the Parasitic WaspInsects · 2020Article
- Behaviours indicating cannibalistic necrophagy in ants are modulated by the perception of pathogen infection level.Scientific reports · 2020Article
- Prophylactic Avoidance of Hazardous Prey by the Ant HostInsects · 2020Article
- Differential Behavioral Responses of Solenopsis invicta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) Workers Toward Nestmate and Non-Nestmate Corpses.Journal of insect science (Online) · 2020Article
- Fine-tuned intruder discrimination favors ant parasitoidism.PloS one · 2019Article
- Managing the risks and rewards of death in eusocial insects.Philosophical transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological sciences · 2018Review
- Destructive disinfection of infected brood prevents systemic disease spread in ant colonies.eLife · 2018Article
- Co-founding ant queens prevent disease by performing prophylactic undertaking behaviour.BMC evolutionary biology · 2017Article
- Ants detect but do not discriminate diseased workers within their nest.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2016Article
- Keep the nest clean: survival advantages of corpse removal in ants.Biology letters · 2014Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
3 authors at 1 institution in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In order to decrease the risk of pathogen transmission, ants remove corpses from the vicinity of nests, but little is known about the underlying mechanisms. In particular, it is unclear how the odor profile of corpses changes with time since death and how any changes might relate to behavior. We have addressed these questions in the red ant Myrmica rubra, where we asked how the time since death determines the ability of workers to discriminate a dead individual from a live one, and whether dead workers are removed in a similar way when they originate from the same or an alien colony. We found that ants could discriminate alien from nestmate corpses up to 2 days after death, since the former continued to elicit aggressive behavior over that period. For dead nestmates, only 15 % of corpses were removed when freshly killed but this rises to 80 % for corpses between 1 to 6 days post mortem. Using gas chromatography, we found that oleic and linoleic acids, which are absent on freshly killed corpses, appeared post mortem and were in higher quantities on those corpses that were ejected from the nest vicinity. When added to fresh corpses, linoleic and oleic acids, alone or blended, enhanced removal to levels observed for corpses of 2-6 days post-mortem. Thus, oleic and linoleic acids appear to be important cues involved in corpse recognition and necrophoresis over a long timeframe, and we advance the hypothesis that these fatty acids in combination with other cues may also trigger other behaviors such as prey retrieval.
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