Infections early in life can have enduring effects on an organism's development and immunity. In this study, we show that this equally applies to developing ‘superorganisms’––incipient social insect colonies. When we exposed newly mated Lasius niger ant queens to a low pathogen dose, their colonies grew more slowly than controls before winter, but reached similar sizes afterwards. Independent of exposure, queen hibernation survival improved when the ratio of pupae to workers was small. Queens that reared fewer pupae before worker emergence exhibited lower pathogen levels, indicating that high brood rearing efforts interfere with the ability of the queen's immune system to suppress pathogen proliferation. Early-life queen pathogen exposure also improved the immunocompetence of her worker offspring, as demonstrated by challenging the workers to the same pathogen a year later. Transgenerational transfer of the queen's pathogen experience to her workforce can hence durably reduce the disease susceptibility of the whole superorganism.

中文翻译：

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早期蚁后感染塑造发育动态并诱导早期蚁群的长期疾病保护

生命早期的感染会对生物体的发育和免疫产生持久的影响。在这项研究中，我们表明这同样适用于发展“超级有机体”——早期的社会昆虫群落。当我们暴露新交配的 Lasius niger蚁后在低病原体剂量的情况下，它们的菌落在冬季前比对照组生长得更慢，但之后达到了相似的大小。与暴露无关，当蛹与工蜂的比例较小时，女王冬眠的存活率会提高。在工人出现之前饲养较少蛹的蜂后表现出较低的病原体水平，这表明高育雏努力会干扰蜂王免疫系统抑制病原体增殖的能力。生命早期的女王病原体暴露也提高了她的工人后代的免疫能力，正如一年后向工人挑战相同的病原体所证明的那样。因此，将女王的病原体经验跨代传递给她的劳动力可以持久地降低整个超有机体的疾病易感性。