Meeting Abstract
Ants have miniaturized brains yet they exhibit surprisingly complex behaviors. In social insect colonies, individuals gather information, integrate it, and compare that information to an inherent set of rules to make behavioral decisions. Many individual decisions can lead to the self-organization of complex behaviors at the level of the colony. However, little is known about the proximate mechanisms behind these collective behaviors. The brain monoamines octopamine, dopamine and serotonin play a significant role in regulating insect behavior. I use pavement ants (Tetramorium caespitum) as a model species to understand how brain neurochemistry regulates collective social behavior. Pavement ants engage in conspicuous battles with non-nestmate colonies that are easy to manipulate and observe. My research attempts to determine how serotonin regulates individual decisions which lead to complex, collective behaviors. Standard immunohistochemistry (IHC) was used to map the distribution and activity of serotonin under different behavioral contexts: social isolation, cooperative social behavior (trophollaxis, allogrooming), and antagonistic response to a non-nestmate. IHC stained for serotonin and the neuronal marker for activity, cFos. I will present data that show the distribution of serotoninergic neurons and the active regions in the pavement ant brain during specific behaviors. In this way we can see the mechanisms behind the individual behaviors that can lead to complex, collective behaviors.
