ArticleeLife2020
Formicine ants swallow their highly acidic poison for gut microbial selection and control.
Article in eLife, 2020. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 15 papers.
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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.
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Who cites it
15 citing papers in PubMed, 39 citations in OpenAlex.
- Beyond formic acid: Peptides in carpenter ant venoms aid in disease protection.Science advances · 2026Article
- Multilevel variation in pathogen susceptibility and grooming behavior in ant societies.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2026Article
- Making yogurt with the ant holobiont uncovers bacteria, acids, and enzymes for food fermentation.iScience · 2025Article
- Interaction with refuse piles is associated with co-occurrence of core gut microbiota in workers of the ant Aphaenogaster picea.Access microbiology · 2025Article
- Seasonal Changes in the Gut Microbiota of Halyomorpha halys.Microbial ecology · 2024Article
- Chemical Components of Dufour's and Venom Glands inInsects · 2023Article
- Article
- 8-HQA adjusts the number and diversity of bacteria in the gut microbiome ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Article
- Biomarkers in a socially exchanged /fluid reflect colony maturity, behavior, and distributed metabolism.eLife · 2021Article
- Competition-based screening helps to secure the evolutionary stability of a defensive microbiome.BMC biology · 2021Article
- Bacterial Inhibition onFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Formicine ants swallow their highly acidic poison for gut microbial selection and control.eLife · 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
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Animals continuously encounter microorganisms that are essential for health or cause disease. They are thus challenged to control harmful microbes while allowing the acquisition of beneficial microbes. This challenge is likely especially important for social insects with respect to microbes in food, as they often store food and exchange food among colony members. Here we show that formicine ants actively swallow their antimicrobial, highly acidic poison gland secretion. The ensuing acidic environment in the stomach, the crop, can limit the establishment of pathogenic and opportunistic microbes ingested with food and improve the survival of ants when faced with pathogen contaminated food. At the same time, crop acidity selectively allows acquisition and colonization by Acetobacteraceae, known bacterial gut associates of formicine ants. This suggests that swallowing of the poison in formicine ants acts as a microbial filter and that antimicrobials have a potentially widespread but so far underappreciated dual role in host-microbe interactions.
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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.