Summary: Using unicellular technology, researchers have discovered how the social division of labor in an ant colony is reflected in the functional specialization of the ant brain at the cellular level.
Source: BGI Group
International researchers led by China’s BGI-Research used single-cell technology to study the brains of ants, explaining for the first time how the social division of labor in ant colonies is reflected in the functional specialization of their brains at the cellular level.
In a study “Unicellular transcriptome atlas tracing the neural basis of the division of labor in an ant superorganism”, published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists from BGI-Research of BGI Group, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, University of Copenhagen and others implemented the BGI DNBeLab single-cell library platform to obtain more than 200,000 single-core transcripts from pharaoh ant brains and built a single-cell transcript map covering all adult phenotypes of this ant species: workers, men, gynecologists.
Ants are one of the most successful organisms on earth, existing for more than 140 million years. The biomass (determined by multiplying the calculated population by the average weight of its members) of ants is estimated to be similar to human biomass. The success of ants is usually due to their remarkable social behavior with a clear reproductive division of labor.
Ant colonies have been conceptualized as superorganisms for more than a century. Now, using single-cell technology, scientists have been able to systematically determine the cellular complexity in an ant’s brain and assess the difference in brain cell composition between individuals in the same colony.
“Our findings suggest that the functional specialization of their brains appears to be the mechanism behind the division of social tasks between ants,” said Dr. Qiye Li, the first author and researcher at BGI-Research. “We humans learn and train to perform various tasks while ants are born with a specific role in their colony.”
The research team found that the brains of female and male ants are highly specialized and highly complementary. The neurons responsible for learning and memory and olfactory information processing are especially abundant in workers, while the abundance of optical lobe cells responsible for visual information processing is very low. This trend is reversed in the brains of male ants, where there is an abundance of optical lobe cells, but fewer neurons for olfactory processing, learning and memory.
“These findings support our laboratory observations that pharaoh ant workers are responsible for all colony maintenance tasks that require a multifunctional brain, while males are not involved in any colony maintenance tasks because their sole function is to to find and inseminate a virgin. the queen. ” said Dr. Weiwei Liu, a researcher at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and co-author of the article.
The analysis also identified significant changes in the gynecologists’ brains as they transformed into queens after mating. For example, the abundance of cells in the optic lobe decreases as queens adapt to the darkness of the nest, while dopaminergic neurons and enveloping glia increase, which may explain the fertility and longevity of queens.
“This is the first single-celled atlas to cover all social roles in an ant colony. His achievement benefits from the development of massive parallel technology for profiling a single cell with high sensitivity and accuracy at a low cost. said Dr. Chuanyu Liu, co-correspondent author and researcher at BGI-Research.
Comparing the brain cells of the pharaoh ant and the Drosophila fruit fly, the researchers also found many preserved cell types in the brains of insects. For example, the population of visual lobe cells in Drosophila responsible for sensing the object’s movement during courtship also exists in ants and is particularly abundant in males.
Ants are one of the most successful organisms on earth, existing for more than 140 million years. The image is in the public domain
The molecular signature and spatial location of these cells are very similar in the two distant related insects, suggesting that these cells probably play a preserved role in regulating the mating behavior of males in insects, regardless of sociality.
“This study helps us understand the complexity of ant brains and how additional specialization in brains allows colony ants to function as a superorganism,” said Prof. Guoji Zhang, co-correspondent at the Center for the Study of Evolutionary and Organic Biology. Medicine, Zhejiang University.
“The brains of different castes and genders specialize in different directions and complement each other, allowing the entire ant colony to perform the full range of functions, including breeding, brooding, foraging and protection.
“This super-organic life strategy has allowed ants to thrive over 140 million years of competition and eventually become a highly dominant animal group on Earth.
Ethical approval was obtained for this study.
For this news on the study of neuroscience
Author: Richard Li Source: BGI Group Contact: Richard Li – BGI GroupImage: Image is in the public domain
Original research: Open access. “A single-celled transcriptome atlas tracing the neural basis of the division of labor into an ant superorganism” by Qiye Li et al. Ecology and evolution of nature
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A single-celled transcriptome atlas tracing the neural basis of the division of labor in an ant superorganism
Colonies of ants with a constant division of labor between castes and highly different gender roles have been conceptualized as superoorganisms, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms that mediate caste / sex-specific behavioral specialization remain unclear.
Here we characterized the repertoire of brain cells of queens, gynecologists (virgin queens), workers and men of Monomorium pharaonis, receiving 206,367 mononuclear transcripts.
Unlike Drosophila, Kenyon cells on the body of fungi are abundant in ants and show great diversity, with most subtypes enriched in the brains of workers, the evolutionarily derived caste.
Male brains are as specialized as workers’ brains, but with opposite tendencies in cell composition with a greater abundance of all neural subtypes of the optical lobe, while the composition of the gynecologist and queen brains remains generalized, reminiscent of lone ancestors.
Role differentiation from virgin gynecologists to inseminated queens causes changes in abundance in approximately 35% of cell types, indicating active neurogenesis and / or programmed cell death during this transition.
We also identified insemination-induced cellular changes, possibly related to longevity and fertility of the reproductive caste, including increased envelope glia and a population of dopamine-regulated Dh31-expressing neurons.
We conclude that constant caste differentiation and extreme gender differentiation cause major changes in the ant chain of ants.
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