Data from: Lifespan behavioral and neural resilience in a social insect

Analyses of senescence in social species are important to understanding how group living influences the evolution of aging in society members. Social insects exhibit remarkable lifespan polyphenisms and division of labor, presenting excellent opportunities to test hypotheses concerning aging and behavior. Senescence patterns in other taxa suggest that behavioral performance in aging workers would decrease in association with declining brain functions. Using the ant Pheidole dentata as a model, we found that 120 day-old minor workers, having completed 86% of their laboratory lifespan, showed no decrease in sensorimotor functions underscoring complex tasks such as alloparenting and foraging. Collaterally, we found no age-associated increases in apoptosis in functionally specialized brain compartments or decreases in synaptic densities in the mushroom bodies, regions associated with integrative processing. Furthermore, brain titers of serotonin and dopamine - neuromodulators that could negatively impact behavior through age-related declines - increased in old workers. Unimpaired task performance appears to be based on the maintenance of brain functions supporting olfaction and motor coordination independent of age. Our study is the first to comprehensively assess lifespan task performance and its neurobiological correlates and identify constancy in behavioral performance and the absence of significant age-related neural declines over the worker lifespan.