Single Cell Technology Used to Study Ant Brains; Findings Reveal Social Task Division in Each of These Tiny Creatures

In a recently published study, scientists applied a single-cell library platform to acquire over 200,000 single-nucleus transcriptomes from pharaoh ant brains and developed a single-cell transcriptome map covering all adult phenotypes of this ant species, specifically males, gynes or virgin queens, workers, and queens.

As specified in a Neuroscience report, the study was conducted by scientists from BGI Group's BGI-Research, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and the University of Copenhagen, among others.

Essentially, ants are among the most successful organisms on this planet, having existed for over 140 million years. More so, the biomass, determined by multiplying an approximated population by the average weight of its members, of ants is evaluated to be akin to the biomass of humans.

The ants' success is generally attributed to their remarkable social behavior with a clear reproductive division of labor.

'Superorganisms'

Colonies of ants have been conceptualized as superorganisms for more than 100 years. They were now taking advantage of single-cell technology. Scientists have systematically identified the cellular complexity in an ant's brain and analyzed the difference in the brain cell composition between individuals belonging to the same colony.

According to Dr. Qiye Li, the first author of the paper published in the Nature Ecology and Evolution journal, their discoveries suggest that "functional specialization of their brains appear t be a mechanism" that underlies the social task division among individual ants.

Li, also a researcher at BGI-Research, added, "humans learn and train" themselves to do different jobs. Ants, on the other hand, are born with a particular role in their colony.

The researchers discovered that the brains of worker and male ants are very specialized, not to mention highly complementary.

Male Ants' Brains

The neurons accountable for learning, memory, and olfactory processing information are specifically abundant in workers, whereas the optic lobe cells' abundance accountable for processing visual information is extremely low.

The trend is reversed in the brains of the male ants, where there is an abundance of optic lobe cells, although fewer neurons for olfactory processing, memory, and learning.

Such findings well back the research team's observations in the laboratory that the pharaoh ant workers are responsible for all colony maintenance tasks that need multipurpose brains.

On the other hand, males are not taking part in any colony maintenance tasks, as their only function is to search for and inseminate a virgin queen, explained researcher Dr. Weiwei Liu from the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences and the paper's co-corresponding author.

Understanding Ant Brains' Complexity

The author, Professor Guojie Zhang from Evolutionary & Organismal Biology Research Center, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University, said the study helps them understand the ant brains' complexity and the complementary specialization; brains enable ants within a colony "to function as a superorganism."

The professor added that the different castes and sexes' brains are specialized in various directions and complementary to each other, enabling the entire ant colony to carry out the full range of functions, including reproduction, foraging, brood rearing, and defense, a similar EurekAlert! report said.

Related information about the study on ant brains is shown on Akira Sakurai's YouTube video below:

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