Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

Journal of Insect Behavior, Apr 2015

Social insect workers usually start adult life from intranidal tasks and then switch to extranidal activities, but this process may be reversed: foragers may switch again to intranidal brood care. The transition forager – reverted nurse is known as the behavioral reversion. Ant foragers are known to avoid illuminated zones less strongly than intranidal workers, but illumination responses of reverted nurses were so far never investigated. We compared dark–light choice behavior of three classes of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena: nurses, foragers and reverted nurses. Sets of ten ants belonging to the same class were tested in “double nests” made of two interconnected test tubes, one kept in darkness and the other exposed to light. The number of ants present in the illuminated zone of each nest (ni) was recorded on 10 sample points at 30 min intervals. The values of ni were lower in nurses than in foragers and reverted nurses and decreased as a function of time in all three groups. Nurses differed from foragers with respect to the dynamics of dark–light choice behavior, but reverted nurses did not differ in that respect either from nurses, or from foragers. Reverted nurses and foragers did not differ significantly from each other with respect to the overall level of avoidance of illuminated zone, nor with respect to the dynamics of dark–light choice behavior. This implies that behavioral reversion is not accompanied by the return of illumination responses of workers of F. polyctena to the state characteristic for nurses.

A PDF file should load here. If you do not see its contents the file may be temporarily unavailable at the journal website or you do not have a PDF plug-in installed and enabled in your browser.

Alternatively, you can download the file locally and open with any standalone PDF reader:

https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10905-015-9496-2.pdf

Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena

Behavioral Reversion and Dark-Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena Beata Symonowicz 0 1 Maria Kieruzel 0 1 Anna Szczuka 0 1 Julita Korczyska 0 1 Andrzej Wnuk 0 1 Pawe Jarosaw Mazurkiewicz 0 1 Micha Chiliski 0 1 Ewa Joanna Godziska 0 1 0 College of Inter-Faculty Individual Studies in Mathematics and Natural Sciences, University of Warsaw , Zwirki i Wigury St. 93, 02-089 Warsaw , Poland 1 Department of Neurophysiology Laboratory of Ethology, Nencki Institute of Experimental Biology , Pasteur St 3, 02-093 Warsaw , Poland Social insect workers usually start adult life from intranidal tasks and then switch to extranidal activities, but this process may be reversed: foragers may switch again to intranidal brood care. The transition forager - reverted nurse is known as the behavioral reversion. Ant foragers are known to avoid illuminated zones less strongly than intranidal workers, but illumination responses of reverted nurses were so far never investigated. We compared dark-light choice behavior of three classes of workers of the red wood ant Formica polyctena: nurses, foragers and reverted nurses. Sets of ten ants belonging to the same class were tested in Bdouble nests^ made of two interconnected test tubes, one kept in darkness and the other exposed to light. The number of ants present in the illuminated zone of each nest (ni) was recorded on 10 sample points at 30 min intervals. The values of ni were lower in nurses than in foragers and reverted nurses and decreased as a function of time in all three groups. Nurses differed from foragers with respect to the dynamics of dark-light choice behavior, but reverted nurses did not differ in that respect either from nurses, or from foragers. Reverted nurses and foragers did not differ significantly from each other with respect to the overall level of avoidance of illuminated zone, nor with respect to the dynamics of dark-light choice behavior. This implies that behavioral reversion is not accompanied by the return of illumination responses of workers of F. polyctena to the state characteristic for nurses. Behavioral reversion; nurse; forager; reverted nurse; dark-light choice; Formica polyctena - Social insect workers as a rule start their adult life from intranidal tasks and then switch to extranidal activities (Otto 1958; Dobrzaska 1959; Lenoir 1979a, 1987; Hlldobler and Wilson 1990, 2009; Fnron et al. 1996). Foragers may, however, switch again to intranidal brood care and become the so called reverted nurses. This phenomenon is known as the behavioral reversion and may be induced by specific modifications of the social context, in particular by the exposure of foragers to brood in absence of younger workers acting as nurses (Ehrhardt 1931; Dobrzaska 1959; Lenoir 1979a, 1987; Robinson et al. 1992; Page and Amdam 2007; Amdam 2011; Herb et al. 2012; Kuszewska and Woyciechowski 2013). Behavioral reversion was investigated in the most detailed way in the honeybee (Apis mellifera L). Extensive research devoted to that phenomenon revealed that honeybee behavioral reversion is not limited to the induction of brood care behavior, but is also accompanied by other modifications of worker behavior (Bloch and Robinson 2001; Behrends et al. 2007; Baker et al. 2012) and by the reversal of numerous other profound phenotype modifications accompanying worker transition from intranidal to extranidal tasks. In particular, it is accompanied by the regeneration of the hypopharyngeal and wax glands, the increase in the diameter of the ovarioles, and the reversal of modifications of hemolymph titres of juvenile hormone and vitellogenin, of age-related decline in immunity (immunosenescence), of changes of biogenic amine levels in specific brain structures, and of some (but not all) modifications of the whole-body protein profile, gene expression, and gene methylation levels (Rsch 1930; Free 1965; Robinson et al. 1992, Amdam and Page 2005; Amdam et al. 2005; Wolschin and Amdam 2007; Mnch et al. 2008; Amdam 2011; Herb et al. 2012; Kuszewska and Woyciechowski 2013; Margotta et al. 2013). Behavioral reversion was also investigated in various species of ants (Ehrhardt 1931; Weir 1958; Dobrzaska 1959; Lenoir 1979a, b; Sorensen et al. 1984; McDonald and Topoff 1985; Wnuk et al. 2011; Korczyska et al. 2014). Phenotype modifications accompanying ant behavioral reversion are, however, much less known than those documented in the honeybee. Several authors also pointed out that honeybee and ant behavioral reversion may represent fundamentally different phenomena (Lenoir 1979a; Sorensen et al. 1984). In particular, whereas in the honeybee phenotype modifications accompanying behavioral reversion develop in a relatively slow and gradual way (Rsch 1930; Robinson et al. 1992; Huang and Robinson 1996), in ants induction of brood care may occur very rapidly, within 24 h, which argues against the exocrine control of that process (Lenoir 1979a; Sorensen et al. 1984; (...truncated)


This is a preview of a remote PDF: https://link.springer.com/content/pdf/10.1007%2Fs10905-015-9496-2.pdf

Beata Symonowicz, Maria Kieruzel, Anna Szczuka, Julita Korczyńska, Andrzej Wnuk, Paweł Jarosław Mazurkiewicz, Michał Chiliński, Ewa Joanna Godzińska. Behavioral Reversion and Dark–Light Choice Behavior in Workers of the Red Wood Ant Formica polyctena, Journal of Insect Behavior, 2015, pp. 245-256, Volume 28, Issue 3, DOI: 10.1007/s10905-015-9496-2