Title |
Crematoenones – a novel substance class exhibited by ants functions as appeasement signal
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Published in |
Frontiers in Zoology, June 2013
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DOI | 10.1186/1742-9994-10-32 |
Pubmed ID | |
Authors |
Florian Menzel, Nico Blüthgen, Till Tolasch, Jürgen Conrad, Uwe Beifuß, Till Beuerle, Thomas Schmitt |
Abstract |
Parasitic, commensalistic, and mutualistic guests in social insect colonies often circumvent their hosts' nestmate recognition system to be accepted. These tolerance strategies include chemical mimicry and chemical insignificance. While tolerance strategies have been studied intensively in social parasites, little is known about these mechanisms in non-parasitic interactions.Here, we describe a strategy used in a parabiotic association, i.e. two mutualistic ant species that regularly share a common nest although they have overlapping food niches. One of them, Crematogaster modiglianii, produces an array of cuticular compounds which represent a substance class undescribed in nature so far. They occur in high abundances, which suggests an important function in the ant's association with its partner Camponotus rufifemur. |
X Demographics
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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United Kingdom | 2 | 50% |
United States | 1 | 25% |
Unknown | 1 | 25% |
Demographic breakdown
Type | Count | As % |
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Members of the public | 4 | 100% |
Mendeley readers
Geographical breakdown
Country | Count | As % |
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Germany | 2 | 7% |
Denmark | 1 | 3% |
Unknown | 27 | 90% |
Demographic breakdown
Readers by professional status | Count | As % |
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Student > Bachelor | 5 | 17% |
Student > Ph. D. Student | 5 | 17% |
Other | 3 | 10% |
Professor > Associate Professor | 3 | 10% |
Researcher | 3 | 10% |
Other | 4 | 13% |
Unknown | 7 | 23% |
Readers by discipline | Count | As % |
---|---|---|
Agricultural and Biological Sciences | 17 | 57% |
Biochemistry, Genetics and Molecular Biology | 1 | 3% |
Social Sciences | 1 | 3% |
Unknown | 11 | 37% |