Division of labour and disease dynamics in clonal ant societies
Microbiology Seminar Series
- Date: Jun 29, 2020
- Time: 04:00 PM (Local Time Germany)
- Speaker: Dr. Yuko Ulrich
- University of Lausanne, Switzerland
- Location: Online
- Host: Prof. Dr. Victor Sourjik
- Contact: victor.sourjik@synmikro.mpi-marburg.mpg.de
Group-living is a widespread strategy that comes with particular costs and benefits. Here, I will describe recent findings on the emergence and regulation of division of labour, a proposed benefit of group-living, in ant colonies. I will then explain how we plan to build on this work to study how social organisation can mitigate the risk of disease outbreak that is often associated with group-living. This work capitalises on a new, experimentally accessible system for the study of social behaviour, the clonal raider ant, and on custom tools for the automated tracking of individual behaviour and social interactions in groups.