diseaseINgroups · Disease defence in groups: the role of relatedness, risk and pathogen type
Horizon 2020 — Marie Skłodowska-Curie Actions
- Duration
- 2021-10-01 → 2025-08-26
- EU contribution
- €159,464
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- MSCA-IF
Lines connect the coordinator with its partners.
Results in brief
Disease defence in groups: the role of relatedness, risk and pathogen type
Living in groups provides many benefits, such as protection from predators, easier access to food, and help with offspring care, but it also brings one major risk: infectious disease spreads more easily among social individuals. Animals don’t have doctors or healthcare systems like we do, so how do they protect themselves and their group members from disease? While highly social insects such as ants and bees live in large families and are known to protect their relatives through collective disease defences, it remains unknown how non-eusocial animals coordinate to prevent infections from spreading within their groups. The diseaseINgroups project set out to answer this question using the red flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), a small, tractable insect that lives in crowded groups in stored grains. The project’s main objectives were to (1) establish Tribolium as a new model species for studying disease defences in groups, (2) identify the behaviours that limit pathogen transmission, and (3) uncover the underlying chemical and molecular mechanisms that coordinate these behaviours under infection risk. The project revealed that flour beetles exhibit coordinated behavioural responses—such as grooming and removal of infected individuals—that effectively prevent pathogen transmission within groups. These findings demonstrate that even non-eusocial animals can achieve powerful, group-level protection through collective behaviour, establishing Tribolium as a new model for studying cooperation and disease management beyond family-based systems. Understanding how animals naturally limit disease spread is not only important for evolutionary biology but also for society: it can inspire new approaches to managing infections in agriculture and livestock, improve models of disease transmission, and provide insights into how cooperation and collective action evolve under pathogen pressure.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
The ongoing COVID-19 pandemic demonstrates the drawbacks of living socially; increased contact and high host density encourage the spread of disease in social groups, compared to those living solitary. Social interactions promote disease spread, but how do animal groups deal with the increased risk of epidemics? The goal of this proposal is to identify key factors governing disease management in groups, so as to enhance our understanding of how behavioural host defences and immunity evolve. In turn, this will help shed light on how group disease defences influence social evolution. This work is crucial as the importance of pathogens as a driver of social complexity and novel adaptations is still unclear. To achieve this goal, I will use a powerful genetically and genomically established insect model organism, the flour beetle (Tribolium castaneum), to manipulate group relatedness, size and structure, as well as epidemiological risk (pathogen species and infection stage). I will then explore how these factors influence group cohesion or dissolution. By using a combination of chemical analyses to identify disease cues and recognition profiles of healthy group members during a secondment, and bioinformatic approaches at my host institution, this project will also provide a detailed picture of the underlying olfactory circuits and genetic pathways behind disease management in groups. By combining behavioural, chemical and bioinformatic assays, this project will be able to address key gaps in our knowledge of group disease defence and will have a large impact on the fields of social evolution and behaviour. The transfer of knowledge at both institutions will significantly expand my technical skillset and allow me to development of my own, independent research niche. The data acquired and skills learnt during this project will be invaluable for applying for independent research positions after the fellowship.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- RUDER BOSKOVIC INSTITUTE · ZagrebCoordinatorCroatia
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union