Data from: Better safe than sorry: Leg amputations as a prophylactic wound care behaviour in carpenter ants

Animals often sustain injuries that are susceptible to lethal infections.
In social insects, wound care behaviours have evolved to reduce these
risks. But the limits of wound care behaviours remain unclear. Here we
investigated the wound care behaviours of the ant Camponotus maculatus.
Our findings show that amputation of legs infected with Pseudomonas
aeruginosa significantly reduced mortality. However, nestmates do not
differentiate between infected and sterile injuries, providing the same
treatments regardless of the infection. Even though we show that early
amputation correlates with higher survival rates, nestmates amputate
indiscriminately on legs with fresh or old wounds. Additionally, cuticular
hydrocarbon profiles differed between ants with infected or sterile wounds
only 24 hours post-injury, a timepoint when amputations are no longer
effective. We propose that C. maculatus workers perform prophylactic
amputations regardless of injury state or age. This is in sharp contrast
to previous studies, which showed clear capabilities to treat infected
wounds differently in ants using antimicrobial compounds. This work,
therefore, shows the limits of wound care behaviours in social insects,
allowing us to better understand the evolutionary drivers of this unique
behaviour.