Targeted treatment of injured nestmates with antimicrobial compounds in an ant society

Infected wounds pose a major mortality risk in animals. Injuries are common in the ant Megaponera analis, which raids pugnacious prey. Here we show that M. analis can determine when wounds are infected and treat them accordingly. By applying a variety of antimicrobial compounds and proteins secreted from the metapleural gland to infected wounds, workers reduce the mortality of infected individuals by 90%. Chemical analyses showed that wound infection is associated with specific changes in the cuticular hydrocarbon profile, thereby likely allowing nestmates to diagnose the infection state of injured individuals and apply the appropriate antimicrobial treatment. This study demonstrates that M. analis ant societies use antimicrobial compounds produced in the metapleural glands to treat infected wounds and reduce nestmate mortality., Chemical Ecology:
Cuticular Hydrocarbon analysis (GC-MS data)
Metapleuralgland secretions (TD-GC-MS data), , # Targeted treatment of injured nestmates with antimicrobial compounds in an ant society

Data includes the 1) finished data table for the Cuticular hydrocarbon (CHC) analyses; 2) the raw data created by the GC-MS for the CHC analyses and 3) the raw data created from the TD-GC-MS for the Metapleural gland secretions (6890 gas chromatograph (GC) coupled to a 5975 mass selective detector (MS) by Agilent Technologies (Waldbronn, Germany). The folders for each data point contain all the information which is readable by the Softwares Chemstation or Masshunter Qualitative Analysis (Agilent Technologies).

## Description of the data and file structure

The finished data table (1) contains the cleaned up datatable of the raw CHC data (2). In the datatable we identified the Hydrocarbon Compound (Compound), the type of compound (type), the Retention time the compound appears on the Gas Chromatograph in minutes (Ret Time) and the standardised Retention Index (Ret Index).

The Cuticular Hydrocar...