CODICES · Chemical cOmmunication coDe of InseCt societiES
FP6 — Marie Curie Actions (Human Resources and Mobility)
- Duration
- 2005-05-01 → 2009-04-30
- EU contribution
- €1,509,755
- Participants
- 1
- Scheme
- EXT
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Results in brief
Final Activity Report Summary - CODICES (Chemical cOmmunication coDe of InseCt societiES)
The evolutionary forces underlying major transitions from solitary to social life are not fully understood. Social insects represent one of the pinnacles of social evolution and therefore are ideal model systems to study the organisation of complex societies. At the core of a successful society there is efficient communication and recognition of group members from competitors and parasites. The project CODICES used an interdisciplinary approach to understand the principles that have shaped chemical communication and recognition in insect societies of different size, kin structure, and ecological pressure. The work produced a number of original and innovative results that will change the way people think about social recognition. For example, the team showed for the first time the occurrence of individual recognition in ants and the fact that this sophisticated ability is based on long-term memory of individual identity. Another ground breaking result is the demonstration of the existence of a specialised caste of workers in charge of maintaining order in the society by punishing selfish individuals. The commonly accepted paradigm of nestmate recognition has been challenged by the CODICES team by showing that ants do not specifically recognise nestmates, but rather recognise and reject non-nestmates bearing odour cues that are novel to their own colony odour. Furthermore, the team published a new method to separate chemical and behavioural cues for the study of social recognition. The relevance of studies on social communication for the broad scientific audience is testified by several positive reviews of recently published book Sociobiology of Communication (Oxford University Press), co-edited by the team leader.
Data: CORDIS, © European Union
Project objective
Social insects are important model systems for studying social evolution and complex systems.There are thousands of species with colonies of different size, kinship structure and nesting environment, that have each evolved evolutionary stable strategies to cope with challenges of social conflict, disease pressure and demands for efficient communication. Social insect communication is mostly chemical and is preferentially directed towards kin and nestmates. Efficient communication is critically important to protect colonies from robbing and parasitism and for the regulation of potential reproductive conflicts between members of the same colony.The proposed project aims to achieve an interdisciplinary understanding of the chemical, neurophysiological and evolutionary principals that have shaped chemical communication across insect societies of different sizes, kin structures and disease pressures. The research will use social Hymenoptera as model systems and will address generally important questions about the honesty and reliability of communication signals as a function of cost efficiency and risk of abuse by non-cooperative individuals. The objectives will be achieved by a combination of behavioural experiments, genetic, chemical and neurophysiological studies. The work is inspired by general principles of kin-selection and economic optimality, allowing predictions both on proximate and ultimate aspects of communication systems. This will allow an explicitly hypothesis-testing approach and an extent of rigour that has not been attempted before in social insect chemical ecology.The objectives and methodologies match the already interdisciplinary research profile of the team leader, and the association with the host group and other international collaborators make this ambitious project highly feasible. The proposed research therefore has a high potential to help maintain and expand the leading European position in the field of fundamental chemical ecology.
Original text from CORDIS.
Participants
- FACULTY OF SCIENCES, UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN · COPENHAGENCoordinatorCity levelDenmark
Links
Data: CORDIS, © European Union