ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2022
Pathogen-mediated natural and manipulated population collapse in an invasive social insect.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2022. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 7 papers.
What it found
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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
7 citing papers in PubMed, 19 citations in OpenAlex.
- Microsporidia: evolution, infection mechanisms and host impact.Nature reviews. Microbiology · 2026Review
- Social immunity in a supercolonial invasive ant: Nest structure confers immune function.The Journal of animal ecology · 2026Article
- Five novel RNA viruses of the invasive big-headed ant (Pheidole megacephala).Archives of virology · 2025Article
- Reduced Cuticular Hydrocarbon Production in a Unicolonial Population of the Ant, Nylanderia fulva, Is Associated with Low Desiccation Resistance in its Invasive Range.Journal of chemical ecology · 2025Article
- Insect immunity in the Anthropocene.Biological reviews of the Cambridge Philosophical Society · 2025Review
- Disease from leaves to landscapes: viral hotspots are determined by spatial arrangement and phytochemistry of host plants in specialist caterpillars.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors at 3 institutions in 1 country.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
SignificanceInvasive social insects are among the most damaging of invasive organisms and have proved universally intractable to biological control. Despite this, populations of some invasive social insects collapse from unknown causes. We report long-term studies demonstrating that infection by a microsporidian pathogen causes populations of a globally significant invasive ant to collapse to local extinction, providing a mechanistic understanding of a pervasive phenomenon in biological invasions: the collapse of established populations from endogenous factors. We apply this knowledge and successfully eliminate two large, introduced populations of these ants. More broadly, microsporidian pathogens should be evaluated for control of other supercolonial invasive social insects. Diagnosing the cause of unanticipated population collapse in invasive organisms can lead to applied solutions.
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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.