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Report

Teaser, summary, work performed and final results

Periodic Reporting for period 1 - EPIDEMICSonCHIP (EPIDEMICS in ant societies ON a CHIP)

Teaser

Summary

Infectious disease has been and still is a significant challenge, despite advances in medicine and public health. The more and the closer the social interactions between hosts, the easier pathogens can spread through a social group. Since the type and frequency of social interactions, as well as the disease susceptibility of individuals, are very diverse, epidemiological processes are extremely difficult to predict. Instead, epidemics can often only be understood in retrospective.
Social insects form very large colonies with intense social contacts. Studying their colonies allows full observation of the social interactions of all colony members, and determination how individual actions contribute to disease protection at the level of the colony. Social insects are hence very good models system for the understanding of epidemics in social groups. In this project, we use ants to study how their individual hygiene behaviors synergize to prevent disease outbreaks in the colony.

Work performed

We determined how sanitary care is organized between colony members, revealing how individual actions to pathogen threats of different intensity trigger collective effects at the colony level. We identified potential cues that may help the ants to detect the health state of colony members and to transmit this information to so far uninvolved colony members, triggering a systemic response to a local threat. We also found that ant colonies have a high resilience to disease, being able to recover and to even pass on immunization through the colony, ensuring high fitness.

Final results

Using an insect model system that allows full surveillance and even manipulation of social interactions will help increase the predictability of epidemiological processes and will inform epidemiological modelling. It will also allow us to see how individual actions affect the outcome of collective processes at the level of the group, respectively the whole system.