---
_id: '1830'
abstract:
- lang: eng
  text: 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 simultaneously
    decreasing allogrooming. This behavioural modulation seems universally adaptive
    and is predicted to contain disease spread in a great variety of host–pathogen
    systems. In contrast, allogrooming directed towards pathogen-exposed individuals
    might both increase and decrease disease risk. Our model reveals that the effect
    of allogrooming depends on the balance between pathogen infectiousness and efficiency
    of social host defences, which are likely to vary across host–pathogen systems.
acknowledgement: We thank Meghan L. Vyleta for the genetical fungal strain characterization
  and Eva Sixt for ant drawings, Matthias Konrad for discussion and Christopher D.
  Pull, Barbara Casillas-Peréz, Sebastian Novak, as well as three anonymous reviewers
  and the theme issue editors Peter Kappeler and Charlie Nunn for valuable comments
  on the manuscript.
article_processing_charge: No
article_type: original
author:
- first_name: Fabian
  full_name: Theis, Fabian
  last_name: Theis
- first_name: Line V
  full_name: Ugelvig, Line V
  id: 3DC97C8E-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
  last_name: Ugelvig
  orcid: 0000-0003-1832-8883
- first_name: Carsten
  full_name: Marr, Carsten
  last_name: Marr
- first_name: Sylvia
  full_name: Cremer, Sylvia
  id: 2F64EC8C-F248-11E8-B48F-1D18A9856A87
  last_name: Cremer
  orcid: 0000-0002-2193-3868
citation:
  ama: Theis F, Ugelvig LV, Marr C, Cremer S. Opposing effects of allogrooming on
    disease transmission in ant societies. <i>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
    Society of London Series B, Biological Sciences</i>. 2015;370(1669). doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108">10.1098/rstb.2014.0108</a>
  apa: Theis, F., Ugelvig, L. V., Marr, C., &#38; Cremer, S. (2015). Opposing effects
    of allogrooming on disease transmission in ant societies. <i>Philosophical Transactions
    of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences</i>. Royal Society,
    The. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108">https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108</a>
  chicago: Theis, Fabian, Line V Ugelvig, Carsten Marr, and Sylvia Cremer. “Opposing
    Effects of Allogrooming on Disease Transmission in Ant Societies.” <i>Philosophical
    Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences</i>.
    Royal Society, The, 2015. <a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108">https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108</a>.
  ieee: F. Theis, L. V. Ugelvig, C. Marr, and S. Cremer, “Opposing effects of allogrooming
    on disease transmission in ant societies,” <i>Philosophical Transactions of the
    Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences</i>, vol. 370, no. 1669.
    Royal Society, The, 2015.
  ista: Theis F, Ugelvig LV, Marr C, Cremer S. 2015. Opposing effects of allogrooming
    on disease transmission in ant societies. Philosophical Transactions of the Royal
    Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences. 370(1669).
  mla: Theis, Fabian, et al. “Opposing Effects of Allogrooming on Disease Transmission
    in Ant Societies.” <i>Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London.
    Series B, Biological Sciences</i>, vol. 370, no. 1669, Royal Society, The, 2015,
    doi:<a href="https://doi.org/10.1098/rstb.2014.0108">10.1098/rstb.2014.0108</a>.
  short: F. Theis, L.V. Ugelvig, C. Marr, S. Cremer, Philosophical Transactions of
    the Royal Society of London. Series B, Biological Sciences 370 (2015).
date_created: 2018-12-11T11:54:15Z
date_published: 2015-05-26T00:00:00Z
date_updated: 2023-02-23T14:06:12Z
day: '26'
department:
- _id: SyCr
doi: 10.1098/rstb.2014.0108
ec_funded: 1
external_id:
  pmid:
  - '25870394'
intvolume: '       370'
issue: '1669'
language:
- iso: eng
main_file_link:
- open_access: '1'
  url: http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4410374/
month: '05'
oa: 1
oa_version: Submitted Version
pmid: 1
project:
- _id: 25DC711C-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
  call_identifier: FP7
  grant_number: '243071'
  name: 'Social Vaccination in Ant Colonies: from Individual Mechanisms to Society
    Effects'
- _id: 25DDF0F0-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
  call_identifier: FP7
  grant_number: '302004'
  name: 'Pathogen Detectors Collective disease defence and pathogen detection abilities
    in ant societies: a chemo-neuro-immunological approach'
- _id: 25E0E184-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
  name: Antnet
- _id: 25E24DB2-B435-11E9-9278-68D0E5697425
  name: Fellowship of Wissenschaftskolleg zu Berlin
publication: Philosophical Transactions of the Royal Society of London. Series B,
  Biological Sciences
publication_identifier:
  eissn:
  - 1471-2970
  issn:
  - 0962-8436
publication_status: published
publisher: Royal Society, The
publist_id: '5273'
quality_controlled: '1'
related_material:
  record:
  - id: '9721'
    relation: research_data
    status: public
scopus_import: '1'
status: public
title: Opposing effects of allogrooming on disease transmission in ant societies
type: journal_article
user_id: 6785fbc1-c503-11eb-8a32-93094b40e1cf
volume: 370
year: '2015'
...