Physiology Commons^™

Downregulation Of Orco And 5-Htt Alters Nestmate Discrimination In The Subterranean Termite Ondontotermes Formosanus (Shiraki), Pengdong Sun, Shuxin Yu, Austin Merchant, Chaoliang Lei, Xuguo Zhou, Qiuying Huang

Entomology Faculty Publications

Nestmate discrimination allows social insects to recognize nestmates from non-nestmates using colony-specific chemosensory cues, which typically evoke aggressive behavior toward non-nestmates. Functional analysis of genes associated with nestmate discrimination has been primarily focused on inter-colonial discrimination in Hymenopterans, and parallel studies in termites, however, are grossly lacking. To fill this gap, we investigated the role of two genes, Orco and 5-HTT, associated with chemosensation and neurotransmission respectively, in nestmate discrimination in a highly eusocial subterranean termite, Odontotermes formosanus (Shiraki). We hypothesized that knocking down of these genes will compromise the nestmate recognition and lead to the antagonistic behavior. To …