The research group of Professor Kenji Matsuura, Professor Naoki Mori, and Dr. Yuki Mitaka of the Graduate School of Agriculture, Kyoto University has succeeded in identifying the pheromone that suppresses the differentiation of termites into soldier ants for the first time in the world.
Termite soldier ants differentiate from worker ants, but interestingly, increasing the proportion of soldier ants in the nest suppresses the differentiation of worker ants into new soldier ants.It has been predicted for more than 30 years that this is because soldier ants secrete pheromones that suppress the differentiation of new soldier ants, but there have been no successful cases of identifying the components of soldier pheromones, and the actual situation is Remained unexplained.
This time, the research group extracted soldier ants and worker ants from the nests of Reticulitermes speratus, which are widely distributed in Japan, and extracted the substances on the surface of each body with an organic solvent.Then, by analyzing the components of the extract, it was identified that volatile terpenes called (-)-β-elemen were detected in large quantities only in soldier ants, and this substance "suppressed the differentiation into soldier ants". For the first time in the world, I discovered that it has the effect of "doing".Furthermore, the group also revealed that this pheromone has the effect of collectively restraining worker ants and the effect of suppressing the growth of insect pathogens.
This result is extremely important for understanding how the division of roles in the nest is controlled in termites, which are social insects, and how the pheromones involved in them have evolved. Have.
