Sanitary care by social ants shapes disease outcome

Sanitary care in ants to fight disease is known to improve the wellbeing of the colony, yet it has been unclear how social disease defense interferes with pathogen competition inside the individual host body. In their recent study published in Ecology Letters, Sylvia Cremer and her research group at the Institute of Science and Technology Austria (IST Austria) revealed that collective care-giving has the power to bias the outcome of co-infections in fungus-exposed colony members.

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