Investigator: Heather Axen, Salve Regina University
Scientific Theme: Neuroscience
Abstract: Emerging human health concerns like the growing potential for global pandemics and increasing limitations of longstanding treatments such antibiotics emphasize the importance of understanding mechanisms of disease avoidance and resistance across genetic, physiological, and behavioral levels to find new methods of prevention and treatment. Experimental investigations on humans are challenging, resulting in the need for a model system that mirrors the dynamics of human societies and is composed of individuals with physiological and genetic aspects transferable to human health. Highly social insects represent such a novel study system. Ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) are representative of human societies; colonies are characterized by frequent social interactions, high densities of individuals coexist in close spatial proximity, and long-term habitation of spatially stable nests. Like humans the transmission risk of contagious disease is exceedingly high, resulting in strong selective pressure to limit disease severity and transmission. Pathogen transmission among individuals, as well as disease severity within an individual, can be affected by the level of genetic diversity within, and among individuals in a population. The proposed project focuses on evaluating the importance of genetic heterogeneity across biological levels on disease transmission and resistance in ants using behavioral assays and investigations of gene expression. We will exploit a unique system of interspecific hybridization in ants characterized by hybrid individuals with extremely heterogeneous genotypes, and is easily manipulated to create colonies with high genetic diversity among workers. This represents a perfect system in which to investigate transmission dynamics, and individual responses to commonly encountered pathogens across biological levels with varying amounts of genetic heterogeneity in order to generate more effective models of disease transmission dynamics, with the potential to inform large-scale issues in human health.
Human Health Relevance: This will be the first study to explore the role of genetic diversity in disease resistance across multiple levels of organization using the unique, and novel model system of highly social insects, with the goal of generating highly effective models of disease transmission and dynamics that have the potential to inform large-scale issues in human health.