Gene Expression Associated With Behaviour Manipulation in Wood Ants Infected With Larval Lancet Fluke, <i>Dicrocoelium dendriticum</i>
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Many ant species show dramatic shifts in behaviour when infected with parasites, but the molecular basis of these behavioural changes is not well understood. An example is the wood ant, Formica aserva, which serves as an intermediate host for the lancet liver fluke, Dicrocoelium dendriticum. Infected ants leave their nests during the cool hours of the day, ascend a flower and then attach themselves to a petal with their mandibles. Attached ants remain affixed to an inflorescence overnight, after which they detach, descend the plant and return to their nest. Unless eaten by a grazing mammal (the obligate next host), infected ants repeat this attach-and-detach cycle for the rest of the summer. We used transcriptomics to decipher the potential molecular mechanisms that underlie this reversible behaviour manipulation. Using naturally infected ants, we recreated the manipulation cycle in the laboratory and then evaluated messenger RNA from ant brains at four contrasting phases of manipulation. Among these phases, we found a total of 1349 transcripts differentially expressed between infected and uninfected ant brains. Many of these transcripts are involved in cell signalling pathways, including odorant, gustatory, vision, circadian rhythm and the production of biogenic monoamines and hormones. Metabolism, protein management and DNA repair functions might also play a role at different phases of manipulation. Our combined results are consistent with the idea that the mechanism(s) leading to the attach/detach/repeat sequence of behaviours of fluke-infected ants is multifaceted, involving much more than temperature-dependent contraction/relaxation of the mandibular muscles.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.001 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".