ArticleNature communications2023
Behavioural individuality determines infection risk in clonal ant colonies.
Article in Nature communications, 2023. 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, 12 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Article
- Integrating the Microbiome Into Infection Ecology and Evolution in Wild Animals.Molecular ecology · 2026Review
- Oxidizing pollutants can disrupt nestmate recognition in ants.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2026Article
- Identification and Stereoselective Total Synthesis of an Insect Homosesquiterpene from the Clonal Raider AntJournal of natural products · 2025Article
- Fantastic beasts and how to study them: rethinking experimental animal behavior.The Journal of experimental biology · 2024Article
- ZooKeys · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
10 authors at 6 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
In social groups, infection risk is not distributed evenly across individuals. Individual behaviour is a key source of variation in infection risk, yet its effects are difficult to separate from other factors (e.g., age). Here, we combine epidemiological experiments with chemical, transcriptomic, and automated behavioural analyses in clonal ant colonies, where behavioural individuality emerges among identical workers. We find that: (1) Caenorhabditis-related nematodes parasitise ant heads and affect their survival and physiology, (2) differences in infection emerge from behavioural variation alone, and reflect spatially-organised division of labour, (3) infections affect colony social organisation by causing infected workers to stay in the nest. By disproportionately infecting some workers and shifting their spatial distribution, infections reduce division of labour and increase spatial overlap between hosts, which should facilitate parasite transmission. Thus, division of labour, a defining feature of societies, not only shapes infection risk and distribution but is also modulated by parasites.
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Registered trials
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