ArticleNature ecology & evolution2023
Pathogen evasion of social immunity.
Article in Nature ecology & evolution, 2023. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 8 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
8 citing papers in PubMed, 20 citations in OpenAlex.
- The influence of ergosterol on termites' defenses against Metarhizium infections.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2026Article
- Varroa destructor weakens the external immunity of western honey bees by impairing melittin production.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Social organization of necrophoresis: insights into disease risk management in ant societies.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Frequent horizontal chromosome transfer between asexual fungal insect pathogens.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Fights on the surface prior to fungal invasion of insects.PLoS pathogens · 2024Article
- Cross-talk between immunity and behavior: insights from entomopathogenic fungi and their insect hosts.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2024Review
- Subterranean termites raise the alarm when their anti-fungal weapon falters.Die Naturwissenschaften · 2023Article
- Dynamic pathogen detection and social feedback shape collective hygiene in ants.Nature communications · 2023Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
9 authors at 2 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Treating sick group members is a hallmark of collective disease defence in vertebrates and invertebrates alike. Despite substantial effects on pathogen fitness and epidemiology, it is still largely unknown how pathogens react to the selection pressure imposed by care intervention. Using social insects and pathogenic fungi, we here performed a serial passage experiment in the presence or absence of colony members, which provide social immunity by grooming off infectious spores from exposed individuals. We found specific effects on pathogen diversity, virulence and transmission. Under selection of social immunity, pathogens invested into higher spore production, but spores were less virulent. Notably, they also elicited a lower grooming response in colony members, compared with spores from the individual host selection lines. Chemical spore analysis suggested that the spores from social selection lines escaped the caregivers' detection by containing lower levels of ergosterol, a key fungal membrane component. Experimental application of chemically pure ergosterol indeed induced sanitary grooming, supporting its role as a microbe-associated cue triggering host social immunity against fungal pathogens. By reducing this detection cue, pathogens were able to evade the otherwise very effective collective disease defences of their social hosts.
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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.