Social insects as a model to study the molecular basis of ageing

Keller, Laurent; Jemielity, Stephanie

doi:10.1016/j.exger.2006.04.002

Cited by 113 publications

(99 citation statements)

References 30 publications

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“…Eusociality has had profound consequences for the evolution of behavioural development, immune function and genetic regulation of ageing [17,18,19]. Social interactions appear to mediate metabolic homeostasis and affect mortality rates [74].…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Few studies have examined the influence of sociality on ageing and life history [11][12][13], and little is understood about cognitive decline and neurobiological changes accompanying senescence in social animals, apart from humans [12,[14][15][16]. Social insects have striking lifespan polyphenisms [17][18][19][20]: queens often live more than a decade, whereas workers may live only several months [21], indicating that the differentiation of reproductive and sterile castes has had profound effects on senescence, which may be influenced by the social organization of colony labour. The relationship of task performance to age-related changes in the worker brain, however, is not well understood.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Lifespan behavioural and neural resilience in a social insect

et al. 2016

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Analyses of senescence in social species are important to understanding how group living influences the evolution of ageing in society members. Social insects exhibit remarkable lifespan polyphenisms and division of labour, presenting excellent opportunities to test hypotheses concerning ageing and behaviour. Senescence patterns in other taxa suggest that behavioural performance in ageing workers would decrease in association with declining brain functions. Using the ant Pheidole dentata as a model, we found that 120-day-old minor workers, having completed 86% of their laboratory lifespan, showed no decrease in sensorimotor functions underscoring complex tasks such as alloparenting and foraging. Collaterally, we found no age-associated increases in apoptosis in functionally specialized brain compartments or decreases in synaptic densities in the mushroom bodies, regions associated with integrative processing. Furthermore, brain titres of serotonin and dopamine-neuromodulators that could negatively impact behaviour through age-related declines-increased in old workers. Unimpaired task performance appears to be based on the maintenance of brain functions supporting olfaction and motor coordination independent of age. Our study is the first to comprehensively assess lifespan task performance and its neurobiological correlates and identify constancy in behavioural performance and the absence of significant age-related neural declines.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Lifespan behavioural and neural resilience in a social insect

et al. 2016

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“…The social insects have been suggested as particularly good model organisms to investigate the mechanisms of aging for two reasons: 1) "queens" can be extraordinarily long living, and 2) there is sometimes tremendous variation in life span between genetically identical "queens" and "workers" (171). In some ant species, queens can live up to 30 yr and frequently live 10 times longer than workers (144).…”

Section: Ectothermic Vertebrates and Invertebratesmentioning

confidence: 99%

Life and Death: Metabolic Rate, Membrane Composition, and Life Span of Animals

Hulbert¹,

Pamplona²,

Buffenstein

et al. 2007

Physiological Reviews

765

725

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Maximum life span differences among animal species exceed life span variation achieved by experimental manipulation by orders of magnitude. The differences in the characteristic maximum life span of species was initially proposed to be due to variation in mass-specific rate of metabolism. This is called the rate-of-living theory of aging and lies at the base of the oxidative-stress theory of aging, currently the most generally accepted explanation of aging. However, the rate-of-living theory of aging while helpful is not completely adequate in explaining the maximum life span. Recently, it has been discovered that the fatty acid composition of cell membranes varies systematically between species, and this underlies the variation in their metabolic rate. When combined with the fact that 1) the products of lipid peroxidation are powerful reactive molecular species, and 2) that fatty acids differ dramatically in their susceptibility to peroxidation, membrane fatty acid composition provides a mechanistic explanation of the variation in maximum life span among animal species. When the connection between metabolic rate and life span was first proposed a century ago, it was not known that membrane composition varies between species. Many of the exceptions to the rate-of-living theory appear explicable when the particular membrane fatty acid composition is considered for each case. Here we review the links between metabolic rate and maximum life span of mammals and birds as well as the linking role of membrane fatty acid composition in determining the maximum life span. The more limited information for ectothermic animals and treatments that extend life span (e.g., caloric restriction) are also reviewed.

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“…In the honey bee, one egg-laying female, the queen, is assisted by thousands of essentially sterile female workers (Seeley, 1995;Winston, 1980). The life histories of these workers -the subjects of this study -are plastic (Amdam, 2010;Amdam and Omholt, 2002;Keller and Jemielity, 2006;Lee, 2003;Parker, 2010). Among them, winter or diutinus bees are the longest-lived workers, and can survive for almost a year (Fluri, 1990;Maurizio, 1954).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Aging and its modulation in a long-lived worker caste of the honey bee

Münch

Kreibich

Amdam

2013

Journal of Experimental Biology

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SUMMARYHighly social animals provide alternative aging models in which vastly different lifespan patterns are flexible, and linked to social caste. Research in these species aims to reveal how environment, including social cues, can shape the transition between shortlived and extremely long-lived phenotypes with negligible senescence. Among honey bee workers, short to intermediate lifespans are typical for summer castes, while the winter caste can live up to 10 times longer. For summer castes, experimental interventions could predictably accelerate, slow or revert functional senescence. In contrast, little is known about the particular conditions under which periods of negligible senescence in winter castes can be disrupted or sustained. We asked how manipulation of social environment in colonies with long-lived winter bees might alter the pace of functional senescence, measured as learning performance, as well as of cellular senescence, measured as lipofuscin accumulation. We show that behavioral senescence becomes rapidly detectable when the winter state is disrupted, and changes in social task behaviors and social environment (brood) are induced. Likewise, we found that cellular senescence was induced by such social intervention. However, cellular senescence showed marked regional differences, suggesting that particular brain regions age slower than others. Finally, by preventing post-winter colonies from brood rearing, behavioral senescence became undetectable, even after transition to the usually short-lived phenotypes had occurred. We envision that social regulation of negligible functional senescence and highly dynamic accumulation of a universal symptom of cellular aging (lipofuscin) offers rewarding perspectives to target proximate mechanisms of slowed aging. Supplementary material available online at

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Social insects as a model to study the molecular basis of ageing

Cited by 113 publications

References 30 publications

Lifespan behavioural and neural resilience in a social insect

Lifespan behavioural and neural resilience in a social insect

Life and Death: Metabolic Rate, Membrane Composition, and Life Span of Animals

Aging and its modulation in a long-lived worker caste of the honey bee

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