Opposing effects of allogrooming on disease transmission in ant societies

To prevent epidemics, insect societies have evolved collective disease defences that are highly effective at curing exposed individuals and limiting disease transmission to healthy group members. Grooming is an important sanitary behaviour—either performed towards oneself (self-grooming) or towards others (allogrooming)—to remove infectious agents from the body surface of exposed individuals, but at the risk of disease contraction by the groomer. We use garden ants (Lasius neglectus) and the fungal pathogen Metarhizium as a model system to study how pathogen presence affects self-grooming and allogrooming between exposed and healthy individuals. We develop an epidemiological SIS model to explore how experimentally observed grooming patterns affect disease spread within the colony, thereby providing a direct link between the expression and direction of sanitary behaviours, and their effects on colony-level epidemiology. We find that fungus-exposed ants increase self-grooming, while simul...为防控传染病，昆虫社会演化出了集体疾病防御机制，这类机制可高效治愈已暴露于病原体的个体，并限制疾病向健康群体成员传播。理毛行为是一项重要的卫生行为——包括自我理毛（self-grooming）与相互理毛（allogrooming）——用于清除已暴露个体体表的传染性病原体，但理毛者存在感染疾病的风险。我们以园林蚁（Lasius neglectus）与真菌病原体绿僵菌（Metarhizium）为模式系统，探究病原体存在如何影响已暴露个体与健康个体间的自我理毛与相互理毛行为。我们构建了流行病学SIS模型，以探究实验观测到的理毛模式如何影响蚁群内的疾病传播，从而搭建起卫生行为的表达与方向，与其对蚁群层面流行病学影响之间的直接关联。我们发现暴露于真菌的蚂蚁会增加自我理毛行为，而同时