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Caste differentiation happens early in development to produce gynes as future colony germlines and workers as present colony soma. However, gynes need insemination to become functional queens, a transition that initiates reproductive role differentiation relative to unmated gynes. Here, we analyze the anatomy and transcriptomes of brains during this differentiation process within the reproductive caste ofMonomorium pharaonis. Insemination terminated brain growth, whereas unmated control gynes continued to increase brain volume. Transcriptomes revealed a specific gene regulatory network (GRN) mediating both brain anatomy changes and behavioral modifications. This reproductive role differentiation GRN hardly overlapped with the gyne-worker caste differentiation GRN, but appears to be also used by distantly related ants where workers became germline individuals after the queen caste was entirely or partially lost. The genescorazoninandneuroparsin Ain the anterior neurosecretory cells were overexpressed in individuals with reduced or nonreproductive roles across all four ant species investigated.
Manuel Nagel; Bitao Qiu; Lisa Eigil Brandenborg; Rasmus Stenbak Larsen; Dongdong Ning; Jacobus Jan Boomsma; Guojie Zhang. The gene expression network regulating queen brain remodeling after insemination and its parallel use in ants with reproductive workers. Science Advances 2020, 6, eaaz5772 .
AMA StyleManuel Nagel, Bitao Qiu, Lisa Eigil Brandenborg, Rasmus Stenbak Larsen, Dongdong Ning, Jacobus Jan Boomsma, Guojie Zhang. The gene expression network regulating queen brain remodeling after insemination and its parallel use in ants with reproductive workers. Science Advances. 2020; 6 (38):eaaz5772.
Chicago/Turabian StyleManuel Nagel; Bitao Qiu; Lisa Eigil Brandenborg; Rasmus Stenbak Larsen; Dongdong Ning; Jacobus Jan Boomsma; Guojie Zhang. 2020. "The gene expression network regulating queen brain remodeling after insemination and its parallel use in ants with reproductive workers." Science Advances 6, no. 38: eaaz5772.
Insects face many cognitive challenges as they navigate nutritional landscapes that comprise their foraging environments with potential food items. The emerging field of nutritional geometry (NG) can help visualize these challenges, as well as the foraging solutions exhibited by insects. Social insect species must also make these decisions while integrating social information (e.g., provisioning kin) and/or offsetting nutrients provisioned to, or received from unrelated mutualists. In this review, we extend the logic of NG to make predictions about how cognitive challenges ramify across these social dimensions. Focusing on ants, we outline NG predictions in terms of fundamental and realized nutritional niches, considering when ants interact with related nestmates and unrelated bacterial, fungal, plant, and insect mutualists. The nutritional landscape framework we propose provides new avenues for hypothesis testing and for integrating cognition research with broader eco-evolutionary principles.
Antonin J. J. Crumière; Calum J. Stephenson; Manuel Nagel; Jonathan Z. Shik. Using Nutritional Geometry to Explore How Social Insects Navigate Nutritional Landscapes. Insects 2020, 11, 53 .
AMA StyleAntonin J. J. Crumière, Calum J. Stephenson, Manuel Nagel, Jonathan Z. Shik. Using Nutritional Geometry to Explore How Social Insects Navigate Nutritional Landscapes. Insects. 2020; 11 (1):53.
Chicago/Turabian StyleAntonin J. J. Crumière; Calum J. Stephenson; Manuel Nagel; Jonathan Z. Shik. 2020. "Using Nutritional Geometry to Explore How Social Insects Navigate Nutritional Landscapes." Insects 11, no. 1: 53.
Automatic and interactive data analysis is instrumental in making use of increasing amounts of complex data. Owing to novel sensor modalities, analysis of data generated in professional team sport leagues such as soccer, baseball, and basketball has recently become of concern, with potentially high commercial and research interest. The analysis of team ball games can serve many goals, e.g., in coaching to understand effects of strategies and tactics, or to derive insights improving performance. Also, it is often decisive to trainers and analysts to understand why a certain movement of a player or groups of players happened, and what the respective influencing factors are. We consider team sport as group movement including collaboration and competition of individuals following specific rule sets. Analyzing team sports is a challenging problem as it involves joint understanding of heterogeneous data perspectives, including high-dimensional, video, and movement data, as well as considering team behavior and rules (constraints) given in the particular team sport. We identify important components of team sport data, exemplified by the soccer case, and explain how to analyze team sport data in general. We identify challenges arising when facing these data sets and we propose a multi-facet view and analysis including pattern detection, context-aware analysis, and visual explanation. We also present applicable methods and technologies covering the heterogeneous aspects in team sport data.
Manuel Stein; Halldór Janetzko; Daniel Seebacher; Alexander Jäger; Manuel Nagel; Jürgen Hölsch; Sven Kosub; Tobias Schreck; Daniel A. Keim; Michael Grossniklaus. How to Make Sense of Team Sport Data: From Acquisition to Data Modeling and Research Aspects. Data 2017, 2, 2 .
AMA StyleManuel Stein, Halldór Janetzko, Daniel Seebacher, Alexander Jäger, Manuel Nagel, Jürgen Hölsch, Sven Kosub, Tobias Schreck, Daniel A. Keim, Michael Grossniklaus. How to Make Sense of Team Sport Data: From Acquisition to Data Modeling and Research Aspects. Data. 2017; 2 (1):2.
Chicago/Turabian StyleManuel Stein; Halldór Janetzko; Daniel Seebacher; Alexander Jäger; Manuel Nagel; Jürgen Hölsch; Sven Kosub; Tobias Schreck; Daniel A. Keim; Michael Grossniklaus. 2017. "How to Make Sense of Team Sport Data: From Acquisition to Data Modeling and Research Aspects." Data 2, no. 1: 2.
Ants show high sensitivity when responding to minute temperature changes and are able to track preferred temperatures with amazing precision. As social insects, they have to detect and cope with thermal fluctuations not only for their individual benefit but also for the developmental benefit of the colony and its brood. In this study we investigate the sensory basis for the fine-tuned, temperature guided behaviors found in ants, specifically what information about their thermal environment they can assess. We describe the dose-response curves of two cold-sensitive neurons, associated with the sensillum coelocapitulum on the antenna of the carpenter ant Camponotus rufipes. One cold-sensitive neuron codes for temperature changes, thus functioning as a thermal flux-detector. Neurons of such type continuously provide the ant with information about temperature transients (TT-neuron). The TT-neurons are able to resolve a relative change of 37% in stimulus intensity (ΔT) and antennal scanning of the thermal environment may aid the ant’s ability to use temperature differences for orientation. The second cold-sensitive neuron in the S. coelocapitulum responds to temperature only within a narrow temperature range. A temperature difference of 1.6°C can be resolved by this neuron type. Since the working range matches the preferred temperature range for brood care of Camponotus rufipes, we hypothesize that this temperature sensor can function as a thermal switch to trigger brood care behavior, based on absolute (steady state) temperature.
Manuel Nagel; Christoph J. Kleineidam. Two cold-sensitive neurons within one sensillum code for different parameters of the thermal environment in the ant Camponotus rufipes. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 2015, 9, 240 .
AMA StyleManuel Nagel, Christoph J. Kleineidam. Two cold-sensitive neurons within one sensillum code for different parameters of the thermal environment in the ant Camponotus rufipes. Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience. 2015; 9 ():240.
Chicago/Turabian StyleManuel Nagel; Christoph J. Kleineidam. 2015. "Two cold-sensitive neurons within one sensillum code for different parameters of the thermal environment in the ant Camponotus rufipes." Frontiers in Behavioral Neuroscience 9, no. : 240.
Various microscopic techniques allow investigating structures from submicron to millimeter range, however, this is only possible if the structures of interest are not covered by pigmented cuticle. Here, we present a protocol that combines clearing of pigmented cuticle while preserving both, hard and soft tissues. The resulting transparent cuticle allows confocal laser-scanning microscopy (CLSM), which yields high-resolution images of e.g. the brain, glands, muscles and fine cuticular structures. Using a fluorescent dye, even single labeled neurons can be visualized and resolved up to an imaging depth of 150 μm through the cleared cuticle. Hydrogen-peroxide, which was used to clear the cuticle, does not preclude immunocytochemical techniques, shown by successful labeling of serotonin-immunoreactive neurons (5HT-ir) in the ants' brain. The 'transparent insect protocol' presented here is especially suited for small arthropods where dissection of organs is very demanding and difficult to achieve. Furthermore, the insect organs are preserved in situ thus allowing a more precise three-dimensional reconstruction of the structures of interest compared to, e.g., dissected or sectioned tissue.
Marco Smolla; Markus Ruchty; Manuel Nagel; Christoph J. Kleineidam. Clearing pigmented insect cuticle to investigate small insects' organs in situ using confocal laser-scanning microscopy (CLSM). Arthropod Structure & Development 2014, 43, 175 -181.
AMA StyleMarco Smolla, Markus Ruchty, Manuel Nagel, Christoph J. Kleineidam. Clearing pigmented insect cuticle to investigate small insects' organs in situ using confocal laser-scanning microscopy (CLSM). Arthropod Structure & Development. 2014; 43 (2):175-181.
Chicago/Turabian StyleMarco Smolla; Markus Ruchty; Manuel Nagel; Christoph J. Kleineidam. 2014. "Clearing pigmented insect cuticle to investigate small insects' organs in situ using confocal laser-scanning microscopy (CLSM)." Arthropod Structure & Development 43, no. 2: 175-181.