“Our goal was to get GCaMP expressed only in a single cell type-the olfactory sensory neurons,” says lead author Taylor Hart, a researcher in Daniel Kronauer’s lab. In this study, the researchers created their transgenic subjects by injecting the eggs of clonal raider ants-a queenless species composed entirely of blind female workers-with genetic material encoding the synthetic protein GCaMP, which lights up neon green when calcium levels change during cellular activity. Previous work from Kronauer’s lab has shown that ants whose odorant receptors have been knocked out cannot respond to pheromone signals. Some ants have more than 500 glomeruli-a bounty thought to be related to their heightened ability to perceive and discriminate between pheromones. The antennal lobes are comprised of specialized structures called glomeruli that are essential to scent processing. He called this response “alarm behavior.” Since then, scientists have documented that alarm behavior and many other complex social activities in ant colonies are regulated by a vast array of pheromones.Īnts’ olfactory receptors are located on neurons in their antennae, which send their input to brain centers called the antennal lobes. Wilson reported that a secretion from the mandibular gland of harvester ants triggered their nestmates to quicken their pace and take up colony defense behaviors. “Our technical breakthroughs now finally allow us to apply these powerful tools in ants to study their social behavior.” “Neurogenetic tools have revolutionized the field of fruit fly neuroscience over the past decades, while social insect neuroscience has essentially been stuck,” says Rockefeller’s Daniel Kronauer, head of the Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior. The results raise questions about how sensory information is processed in the ant brain-as well as tantalizing possibilities for revealing what hundreds of other odorant receptors are up to. They published their results on June 14 in the journal Cell.Ĭontrary to previous findings, the study found that only a few specific areas of the olfactory system lit up in response to alarm pheromones, danger signals that elicit panic and nest evacuation. To whittle away at the mystery, researchers from Rockefeller University have developed the world’s first transgenic ants, which have been bred with olfactory sensory neurons that flash green in response to odorants. The importance of this system is underscored by how well-equipped the ant brain is to process the abundance of scents: The olfactory processing center in the ant’s brain has 10 times as many subdivisions as fruit flies do, for example, even though their brains are about the same size.Īnd yet how the ant olfactory system encodes scent data has remained largely unknown. ![]() ![]() Whether foraging or defending the nest, mating, or tending to their young, ants both send and receive chemical signals throughout their lives. This breakthrough allows further exploration of ant social behavior.Īnts navigate their richly aromatic world using an array of odor receptors and chemical signals called pheromones. They found that alarm pheromones only activate specific areas in the system, challenging previous understanding of scent data processing in ants. Scientists have engineered the first transgenic ants to gain insights into the ants’ olfactory system. Credit: Laboratory of Social Evolution and Behavior at The Rockefeller University A composite of two clonal raider ant pupa, one transgenic, which expresses the green fluorescent calcium indicator GCaMP in its olfactory sensory neurons, located in the antennae and antennal lobes of the brain.
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