Not one odour but two: A new model for nestmate recognition
| Autor: | Philip S. Newey |
|---|---|
| Rok vydání: | 2010 |
| Předmět: |
Statistics and Probability
Weaver ant Biology Models Biological General Biochemistry Genetics and Molecular Biology medicine Animals Computer Simulation Communication General Immunology and Microbiology business.industry Aggression Ecology Ants Applied Mathematics fungi Genetic Variation General Medicine biology.organism_classification Oecophylla smaragdina Aggression/physiology Algorithms Animal Communication Ants/physiology Genetic Variation/physiology Odors/analysis Immune defence Mate choice Modeling and Simulation Odorants medicine.symptom General Agricultural and Biological Sciences business Diversity (business) |
| Zdroj: | Journal of Theoretical Biology, vol. 270, no. 1, pp. 7-12 |
| ISSN: | 1095-8541 |
| Popis: | Recognition systems play a key role in a range of biological processes, including mate choice, immune defence and altruistic behaviour. Social insects provide an excellent model for studying recognition systems because workers need to discriminate between nestmates and non-nestmates, enabling them to direct altruistic behaviour towards closer kin and to repel potential invaders. However, the level of aggression directed towards conspecific intruders can vary enormously, even among workers within the same colony. This is usually attributed to differences in the aggression thresholds of individuals or to workers having different roles within the colony. Recent evidence from the weaver ant Oecophylla smaragdina suggests that this does not tell the whole story. Here I propose a new model for nestmate recognition based on a vector template derived from both the individual’s innate odour and the shared colony odour. This model accounts for the recent findings concerning weaver ants, and also provides an alternative explanation for why the level of aggression expressed by a colony decreases as the diversity within the colony increases, even when odour is well-mixed. The model makes additional predictions that are easily tested, and represents a significant advance in our conceptualisation of recognition systems. |
| Databáze: | OpenAIRE |
| Externí odkaz: |
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