Source: BGI Group International researchers led by China’s BGI-Research have used monocyte technology to study ant brains, explaining for the first time how the social division of labor in ant colonies is reflected in the functional specialization of their brains at the cellular level. In a study, “A single-celled transcription atlas that tracks the neural basis of division of labor in an ant superorganism,” published in Nature Ecology and Evolution, scientists from BGI Group BGI-Research, Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy University of Copenhagen and others used BGI’s DNBeLab monocyte library platform to receive more than 200,000 transcription monocytes from pharaoh ant brains and constructed a single-cell transcript map of all female (virgin queens), and queens. Ants are one of the most successful organisms on earth, having existed for more than 140 million years. The biomass (determined by multiplying an estimated population by the average weight of its members) of ants is estimated to be similar to that of humans. The success of ants is generally attributed to their remarkable social behavior with a clear reproductive division of labor. Ant colonies have been considered superorganisms for more than a century. Now, using the technology of a cell, scientists have been able to systematically determine the cellular complexity in an ant’s brain and evaluate the difference in the composition of brain cells between individuals in the same colony. “Our findings suggest that the functional specialization of their brains appears to be a mechanism based on the social separation of tasks between individual ants,” says Dr. Qiye Li, first author of the paper and researcher at BGI-Research. “We humans learn and train ourselves to do different jobs, while ants are born with a specific role in their colony.” The research team found that the brains of workers and male ants are highly specialized and highly complementary. The neurons responsible for learning and memory and the processing of olfactory information are particularly abundant in employees, while the abundance of optic lobe cells that are responsible for processing visual information is very low. This tendency is reversed in the brains of male ants where there is an abundance of optic lobe cells, but fewer neurons for olfactory processing, learning and memory. “These findings well support our observations in the laboratory that Pharaoh ant workers are responsible for all colony maintenance work that requires a reusable brain, while males are not involved in colony maintenance work, as their only function is to find and to fertilize a virgin queen, “said Dr. Weiwei Liu, a researcher at the Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, and co-author of the work. The analysis also identified significant changes in the female’s brain, as they transformed into queens after mating. For example, the abundance of optic lobe cells decreased as queens adapted to nest darkness, while dopaminergic neurons and glial sheaths increased, which may be responsible for queens fertility and longevity. “This is the first single-celled atlas to cover all social roles in an ant colony. Its achievement benefits from the mass development of parallel technology of single cell profiles with high sensitivity and precision at low cost “. said Dr. Chuanyu Liu, co-correspondent author and researcher at BGI-Research. Comparing the brain cells of the Pharaoh ant and the Drosophila fly, the researchers also found many conserved cell types in the insect’s brain. For example, a population of optic lobe cells in Drosophila that is responsible for sensing the movement of objects during courtship is also present in ants and is particularly abundant in males. Ants are one of the most successful organisms on earth, having existed for more than 140 million years. The image is public domain The molecular signature and spatial location of these cells are very similar to the two distant related insects, suggesting that these cells probably play a retained role in regulating male mating behavior in insects regardless of sociability. “This study helps us understand the complexity of the ant brain and how complementary brain specialization allows ants within a colony to function as a superorganism,” said Professor Guojie Zhang, co-author of Evolutionary & Organismal Biology. Research Center, School of Medicine, Zhejiang University. “The brains of different castes and sexes are specialized in different directions and complement each other, allowing the entire ant colony to perform the full range of functions, such as reproduction, brood rearing, food search and defense. “This life strategy of superorganisms has enabled ants to flourish over 140 million years of competition and eventually become an extremely dominant group of animals on Earth.”
Ethical approval was obtained for this research.

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Author: Richard Li Source: BGI GroupContact: Richard Li – BGI GroupImage: Image is public Original research: Open access. “A single-celled transcriptional atlas that tracks the neural basis of the division of labor into an ant superorganism” by Qiye Li et al. Nature Ecology and Evolution See also Abstract A unicellular transcriptional atlas that tracks the neural basis of the division of labor into an ant superorganism Ants colonies with a permanent division of labor between castes and highly distinct sex roles have been thought to be hyperorganisms, but the cellular and molecular mechanisms that mediate caste / sex behavior have remained obscure. Here we characterized the repertoire of Monomorium pharaonis queen, female (virgin queens), workers and males brain cells receiving 206,367 transcription mononuclei. Unlike Drosophila, the Kenyon cells of the mushroom body are abundant in ants and show great diversity with most subtypes being enriched in the brains of workers, the evolving caste. The male brains are as specialized as the workers’s brains, but with opposite tendencies in the cell composition with a higher abundance of all subtypes of optic lobe neurons, while the female’s brain and the queen brain remain predominantly general. The differentiation of the role from virgin female to fertilized queens causes abundant changes in about 35% of cell types, indicating active neurogenesis and / or programmed cell death during this transition. We also identified sperm-induced cellular changes that are likely to be related to reproductive caste longevity and fertility, including increases in the lining covering the casing and a population of DH1-regulated DH31-expressing neurons. We conclude that permanent caste differentiation and extreme sex differentiation have caused significant changes in the nervous system of ants.