What if you could vaccinate a loved one by kissing them? Then you could be an insect.
Ants exchange spit that contains disease-fighting compounds so some members of a colony can essentially immunize the rest of the mouth-to-mouth, says Rebeca Rosengaus, Associate Professor and Behavioral Ecologist at Northeastern.
Termites do something similar sometimes, but their pathogen-fighting material comes out on the other end. Other times they dance a little.
People could take a page out of the book of beetles, says Rosengaus.
“We’re not trying to say that humans act like termites and termites act like humans,” she says. “But we can use it as a model to say that millions and millions of years of natural selection have produced these solutions to the problem of how not to get infected. We could probably learn a lot from them. “
Rosengaus has been studying the ability of social insects (such as ants and termites) to fight disease for three decades. But she’s not just trying to figure out how the beetles protect their colonies from being wiped out. Rosengaus’ research deals with questions about the origins of social behavior. Their hypothesis is that the advantage of joint defense against pathogens has fueled the development of close-knit insect colonies. In other words, any single insect gets along best with a little help from its colonial counterparts.
Social insects such as termites can live in groups of thousands and even millions of individuals in a single nest. Rebeca Rosengaus, associate professor at the College of Science, examines how social insects like termites have evolved multiple strategies to protect their colony from disease. Photos by Matthew Modoono / Northeastern University
This is not just because of the spit swap ants do, or because Hm, Faecal donations (which Rosengaus calls “immune goodies”) that are shared between individual termites. Social insects use many different disease control techniques to eradicate harmful bacteria, fungi, or other pathogens from their communities.
When a termite or ant returns to their colony with a harmful fungus or microbe in tow, the other insects in the colony lick and groom them to use compounds in their saliva or digestive structures to kill or dispose of the pathogen before it can spread the rest of the nest.
An infected termite will too shake and twitch to push off his relatives so as not to transmit disease to them in a kind of quarantine dance. “That says to others:” There are a lot of pathogens here, don’t come over, “says Rosengaus.
These antifungal feces are also useful as this material can cover and kill pathogens.
“You don’t just use one thing, but several methods at the same time or one after the other to deal with pathogenic risks,” says Rosengaus. And that multi-faceted approach, she says, is not dissimilar to people using masks, physical distancing, sanitary measures, sanitation, quarantine, and ultimately, vaccination as tools that work together in the fight against COVID-19.
While humans have had to learn how to do these things, the termites Rosengaus studies seem to be born and know when these behaviors are necessary.
“Whether the colony is old, whether the colony is young, they seem to do it anyway. So I think that this is more of an innate behavior, ”says Rosengaus. “You are born and already have a wired behavioral reaction: when you perceive the pathogen, they begin to groom each other, they begin to tremble” and so on.
Also firmly associated with ants is a response to chip-in wherever a person is needed during a crisis. Ants specialize in different professions: younger ants usually take care of the brood or queen in the nest, while older ants go out and look for food. However, when the nurses are removed from a colony, the gatherers find that the work is not getting done in the nest and revert to that role.
“They are not little robots,” says Rosengaus. “They actually perceive and feel their surroundings. And when they perceive their surroundings, they find that this job is not getting done. “
With renewed global awareness of public health risks and existential concerns about how to better deal with the next looming pandemic or epidemic as a society than COVID-19, experts should look beyond the obvious sources of human innovation for nature .
“It’s important that we think outside the box,” she says. “We could learn something from how nature came up with solutions for other organisms. It doesn’t have to be social insects. I don’t know that zebras, wildebeests, and anything that lives and moves in a group should be a good model for understanding what mechanisms are needed to cope with disease. It’s just that insects are easy to manipulate in the laboratory. “
For media inquiriesPlease contact Marirose Sartoretto at m.sartoretto@northeastern.edu or 617-373-5718.
