The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours

Ants use various communication channels to regulate their social organisation. The main channel that drives almost all the ants’ activities and behaviours is the chemical one, but it is long acknowledged that the acoustic channel also plays an important role. However, very little is known regarding...

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Main Authors:	Di Giulio, Andrea, Maurizi, Emanuela, Barbero, Francesca, Sala, Marco, Fattorini, Simone, Balletto, Emilio, Bonelli, Simona
Format:	Online
Language:	English
Published:	Public Library of Science 2015
Online Access:	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4496082/

id	pubmed-4496082
recordtype	oai_dc
spelling	pubmed-44960822015-07-15 The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours Di Giulio, Andrea Maurizi, Emanuela Barbero, Francesca Sala, Marco Fattorini, Simone Balletto, Emilio Bonelli, Simona Research Article Ants use various communication channels to regulate their social organisation. The main channel that drives almost all the ants’ activities and behaviours is the chemical one, but it is long acknowledged that the acoustic channel also plays an important role. However, very little is known regarding exploitation of the acoustical channel by myrmecophile parasites to infiltrate the ant society. Among social parasites, the ant nest beetles (Paussus) are obligate myrmecophiles able to move throughout the colony at will and prey on the ants, surprisingly never eliciting aggression from the colonies. It has been recently postulated that stridulatory organs in Paussus might be evolved as an acoustic mechanism to interact with ants. Here, we survey the role of acoustic signals employed in the Paussus beetle-Pheidole ant system. Ants parasitised by Paussus beetles produce caste-specific stridulations. We found that Paussus can “speak” three different “languages”, each similar to sounds produced by different ant castes (workers, soldiers, queen). Playback experiments were used to test how host ants respond to the sounds emitted by Paussus. Our data suggest that, by mimicking the stridulations of the queen, Paussus is able to dupe the workers of its host and to be treated as royalty. This is the first report of acoustic mimicry in a beetle parasite of ants. Public Library of Science 2015-07-08 /pmc/articles/PMC4496082/ /pubmed/26154266 http://dx.doi.org/10.1371/journal.pone.0130541 Text en © 2015 Di Giulio et al http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are properly credited.
repository_type	Open Access Journal
institution_category	Foreign Institution
institution	US National Center for Biotechnology Information
building	NCBI PubMed
collection	Online Access
language	English
format	Online
author	Di Giulio, Andrea Maurizi, Emanuela Barbero, Francesca Sala, Marco Fattorini, Simone Balletto, Emilio Bonelli, Simona
spellingShingle	Di Giulio, Andrea Maurizi, Emanuela Barbero, Francesca Sala, Marco Fattorini, Simone Balletto, Emilio Bonelli, Simona The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
author_facet	Di Giulio, Andrea Maurizi, Emanuela Barbero, Francesca Sala, Marco Fattorini, Simone Balletto, Emilio Bonelli, Simona
author_sort	Di Giulio, Andrea
title	The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
title_short	The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
title_full	The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
title_fullStr	The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
title_full_unstemmed	The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours
title_sort	pied piper: a parasitic beetle’s melodies modulate ant behaviours
description	Ants use various communication channels to regulate their social organisation. The main channel that drives almost all the ants’ activities and behaviours is the chemical one, but it is long acknowledged that the acoustic channel also plays an important role. However, very little is known regarding exploitation of the acoustical channel by myrmecophile parasites to infiltrate the ant society. Among social parasites, the ant nest beetles (Paussus) are obligate myrmecophiles able to move throughout the colony at will and prey on the ants, surprisingly never eliciting aggression from the colonies. It has been recently postulated that stridulatory organs in Paussus might be evolved as an acoustic mechanism to interact with ants. Here, we survey the role of acoustic signals employed in the Paussus beetle-Pheidole ant system. Ants parasitised by Paussus beetles produce caste-specific stridulations. We found that Paussus can “speak” three different “languages”, each similar to sounds produced by different ant castes (workers, soldiers, queen). Playback experiments were used to test how host ants respond to the sounds emitted by Paussus. Our data suggest that, by mimicking the stridulations of the queen, Paussus is able to dupe the workers of its host and to be treated as royalty. This is the first report of acoustic mimicry in a beetle parasite of ants.
publisher	Public Library of Science
publishDate	2015
url	https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4496082/
_version_	1613245733431934976

The Pied Piper: A Parasitic Beetle’s Melodies Modulate Ant Behaviours

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