ABOVE: Minor (left) and major (right) C. floridanus workers
RILEY GRAHAM, BERGER LAB

Florida carpenter ants (Camponotus floridanus) develop specialized jobs early in adulthood. “Major” worker ants are large soldier ants that help protect the colony, while “minor” worker ants are smaller and forage for food. Researchers have identified an epigenetic pathway that can be altered to make majors show foraging behaviors like minor ants, according to a paper published in Molecular Cell yesterday (November 12).

Major ants treated with trichostatin A (large ants, left) were more likely to forage for sugar water than control ants (not pictured). The smaller ants are minor ants.
KARL GLASTAD, BERGER LAb

A team led by Shelley Berger, an epigeneticist at the University of Pennsylvania Perelman School of Medicine, injected the brains of major ants with the chemical trichostatin A at either 0, 5, or 10 days after the insects...

“Given how highly related workers of different castes are to one another, we’ve always suspected that the epigenome plays a big role in their huge behavioral differences,” said first author Karl Glastad, a postdoc in the Berger lab, in a news release. “However, this is the first study where the actual mechanism has been identified, from epigenome, through hormonal signaling, and finally to behavior.”

See “Researchers Grow ‘Frankenstein Ants’ to Study Epigenetics”

K.M. Glastad et al., “Epigenetic regulator CoREST controls social behavior in ants,” Mol Cell, doi:10.1016/j.molcel.2019.10.012, 2019.

Emily Makowski is an intern at The Scientist. Email her at emakowski@the-scientist.com.

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