How territoriality reduces disease transmission among social insect colonies

Discrimination against non-nestmates functions to exclude socially parasitic conspecifics in an ant

“…It can be argued that the nestmate discrimination of P. punctatus serves as a border defence against intrusion of the conspecific and exogenous cheaters. In general, nestmate discrimination functions as defence mechanisms against any selfishness exhibited by non-nestmates, including food-theft, brood-robbing and brood parasitism (Breed et al ., 2012; Downs & Ratnieks, 2000), and against pathogens likely attached to non-nestmates (Lemanski et al ., 2021). Here, an evolutionary analogy can be drawn between nestmate discrimination of colonies and self/non-self discrimination of immune systems in multicellular organisms, with the former often being likened to “social immunity” (Cremer & Sixt, 2009; Pull & McMahon, 2020).…”

Sociality and disease: behavioral perspectives in ecological and evolutionary immunology

“…After quantifying monkey activity budgets and behavioral predictability as a function of infection with two gastrointestinal parasites, they conclude that sickness behaviors in monkeys was context-dependent, contingent on the type of parasite and food availability, and that ecological stress likely overrides the ability to express sickness behavior in an adaptive fashion. Lemanski et al (2021) generate an agentbased model focused on how territorial behavior in eusocial insects (a type of "antisocial behavior" in the authors' opinion) prevents the introduction of infected foreign workers into a colony and concluded that territoriality can flatten the curve of an epidemic, delaying the introduction of an infectious disease and reducing its maximum prevalence. However, this was again context-dependent; the benefits of territoriality against risks and prevalence of infections were only observed when pathogens ranged between low to moderate transmissibility.…”