Abstract
Here we show that larvae of the lycaenid butterfly Niphanda fusca secrete droplets containing trehalose and glycine. These droplets attract the larva’s host ants Camponotus japonicus, which collect and protect the larvae. We comparatively investigated gustatory preference for trehalose, glycine or a mixture of the two between host (C. japonicus) and non-host (Camponotus obscuripes) species of ants in behavioral and electrophysiological experiments. Glycine itself induced no taste sensation in either host or non-host ants. The mixture of trehalose plus glycine was chosen as much as pure trehalose by non-host ants. However, the host ants clearly preferred the mixture of trehalose plus glycine to trehalose alone. When we used sucrose instead of trehalose, the mixture of sucrose plus glycine was chosen as much as sucrose alone, in both species. These behavioral data are supported by the electrophysiological responsiveness to sugars and/or glycine in the sugar-taste receptor cells of the ants. Considering that lycaenid butterflies’ secretions have species-specific compositions of sugar and amino acid; our results clearly showed that such species-specific compositions of larval secretions are precisely tuned to the feeding preferences of their host ant species, in which the feeding preferences are synergistically enhanced by amino acid.
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Abbreviations
- DNO:
-
Dorsal nectary organ
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Acknowledgments
We are grateful to David H. Hembry for helpful comments on the manuscript and language revision and two anonymous referees for their valuable comments. We thank Yasuhisa Endo for his help in scanning electron microscope, Hiroshi Oyama and Mayuko Shiraga for their help in chemical analysis, and Takeshi Takeda, Yuji Satoji, Daisuke Imaeda, Hayato Inui and Daisuke Umemoto for their help with collecting our study animals. All work presented here complied with the ‘‘Principles of animal care’’, publication No. 86–23, revised 1985 of the National Institute of Health, and also with the current laws of Japan, where these experiments were performed.
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Hojo, M.K., Wada-Katsumata, A., Ozaki, M. et al. Gustatory synergism in ants mediates a species-specific symbiosis with lycaenid butterflies. J Comp Physiol A 194, 1043–1052 (2008). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-008-0375-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00359-008-0375-6