TY - JOUR A1 - Esparza-Mora, M. Alejandra A1 - Mazumdar, Tilottama A1 - Jiang, Shixiong A1 - Radek, Renate A1 - Thiem, Julian N. A1 - Feng, Linshan A1 - Petrašiūnaitė, Vesta A1 - Banasiak, Ronald A1 - Golian, Marek A1 - Gleske, Melanie A1 - Christophe, Lucas A1 - Springer, Andreas A1 - Buellesbach, Jan A1 - McMahon, Dino T1 - Defensive behavior is linked to altered surface chemistry following infection in a termite society T2 - Scientific Reports N2 - The care-kill response determines whether a sick individual will be treated or eliminated from an insect society, but little is known about the physiological underpinnings of this process. We exploited the stepwise infection dynamics of an entomopathogenic fungus in a termite to explore how care-kill transitions occur, and identify the chemical cues behind these shifts. We found collective responses towards pathogen-injected individuals to vary according to severity and timing of pathogen challenge, with elimination, via cannibalism, occurring sooner in response to a severe active infection. However, injection with inactivated fungal blastospores also resulted in increased albeit delayed cannibalism, even though it did not universally cause host death. This indicates that the decision to eliminate an individual is triggered before pathogen viability or terminal disease status has been established. We then compared the surface chemistry of differently challenged individuals, finding increased amounts of long-chained methyl-branched alkanes with similar branching patterns in individuals injected with both dead and viable fungal blastospores, with the latter showing the largest increase. This coincided with the highest amounts of observed cannibalism as well as signs of severe moribundity. Our study provides new mechanistic insight into the emergent collective behaviors involved in the disease defense of a termite society. PB - Macmillan Publishers Limited, part of Springer Nature CY - London KW - Termite KW - Social Immunity KW - CHC KW - Pathogen PY - 2023 UR - https://opus4.kobv.de/opus4-bam/frontdoor/index/index/docId/59446 AN - OPUS4-59446 UR - https://nbn-resolving.org/urn:nbn:de:kobv:b43-594468 SN - 2045-2322 VL - 13 IS - 1 SP - 1 EP - 16 AD - Bundesanstalt fuer Materialforschung und -pruefung (BAM), Berlin, Germany