Test of the negative feedback hypothesis of colony size sensing in social insects

Kikuchi, T., Hayashi, Y. ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-9207-6322, Fujito, Y., Fujiwara-Tsujii, N., Kawabata, K., Sugawara, K., Yamaoka, R. and Tsuji, K. (2024) Test of the negative feedback hypothesis of colony size sensing in social insects. Biology Letters, 20 (6). ISSN 1744-957X doi: 10.1098/rsbl.2024.0102

Abstract/Summary

Social insects can sense colony size—even without visual information in a dark environment. How they achieve this is yet largely unknown. We empirically tested a hypothesis on the proximate mechanism using ant colonies. In Diacamma colonies, the monogynous queen is known to increase the effort devoted to queen pheromone transmission behaviour (patrolling) as the colony grows, as if she perceives colony size. The negative feedback hypothesis assumes that, through repeated physical contact with workers, the queen monitors the physiological state (fertility) of workers and increases her patrolling effort when she encounters more fertile workers. Supporting this hypothesis, we found that the queen increased her patrolling effort in response to a higher ratio of fertile workers under the experimental condition of constant colony size. Furthermore, chemical analyses and bioassays suggested that cuticular hydrocarbons have queen pheromone activity and can mediate the observed queen–worker communication of fertility state. Such a self- organizing mechanism of sensing colony size may also operate in other social insects living in small colonies.

Item Type	Article
URI	https://reading-clone.eprints-hosting.org/id/eprint/117037
Item Type	Article
Refereed	Yes
Divisions	Interdisciplinary Research Centres (IDRCs) > Centre for Integrative Neuroscience and Neurodynamics (CINN) Life Sciences > School of Biological Sciences > Department of Bio-Engineering
Publisher	The Royal Society
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