Abstract
Social insects live in cooperative colonies, often in high densities and with closely related individuals, and interact using social contact behaviours. Compared to solitary insects, social insects have evolved multi-level immunity that includes immune responses common to holometabolous insects, and social immunity, which is exclusive to social taxa. This suggests that social insects may be subject to high pathogen pressure, yet relatively little is known about the range of symbiotic and pathogenic microbial communities that associate with social insects. In this study we examined transcriptome data generated from the ant Formica exsecta for sequences identifying as microbes (or other organisms potentially of non-ant origin). Sequences showing homology to two viruses and several other potentially or obligate intracellular organisms, such as Wolbachia, Arsenophonus, Entomoplasmatales and Microsporidia, were present in the transcriptome data. These homologous sequence matches correspond to genera/species that have previously been associated with a variety of insects, including social insects. There were also sequences with identity to several other microbes such as common moulds and soil bacteria. We conclude that this sequence data provides a starting point for a deeper understanding of the biological interactions between a species of ant and the micro- and macrobiotic communities that it potentially encounters.
Highlights
Identifying and classifying pathogens for a species of interest has great significance for fundamental research in ecology and evolution
Social insects are believed to be under increased pathogen pressure
We identified the contig ‘isotig09016’ in the published F. exsecta transcriptome generated by Badouin et al, [58] which showed 99% identity with sequences yielding identity to the Iflavirus in our transcriptome
Summary
Identifying and classifying pathogens for a species of interest has great significance for fundamental research in ecology and evolution. Social immunity in ants and other social insects include the use of specialized glands [8], and a variety of behaviours such as allogrooming to remove parasites from one another [18], task specialization [19,20] and nest maintenance [9]. In spite of their importance for the evolution of immunity, natural pathogen communities have been assessed in detail only for honey bees [5] and one species of ant, the red invasive fire ant Solenopsis invicta [21] (and references therein)
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