Huan Xu 徐焕, Qiuying Huang 黄求应, Yongyong Gao 高勇勇, Jia Wu 吴佳, Ali Hassan, Yutong Liu 刘昱彤
Foraging, as an energy-consuming behavior, is very important for colony survival in termites. How energy metabolism related to glucose decomposition and adenosine triphosphate (ATP) production influences foraging behavior in termites is still unclear. Here, we analyzed the change in energy metabolism in the whole organism and brain after silencing the key metabolic gene () and then investigated its impact on foraging behavior in the subterranean termite in different social contexts. The gene exhibited higher expression in the abdomen and head of . The knockdown of resulted in metabolic disorders in the whole organism. The ds-injected workers showed significantly reduced walking activity but increased foraging success. Interestingly, knockdown altered brain energy metabolism, resulting in a decline in ATP levels and an increase in IDH activity. Additionally, the social context affected brain energy metabolism and, thus, altered foraging behavior in . We found that the presence of predator ants increased the negative influence on the foraging behavior of ds-injected workers, including a decrease in foraging success. However, an increase in the number of nestmate soldiers could provide social buffering to relieve the adverse effect of predator ants on worker foraging behavior. Our orthogonal experiments further verified that the role of the gene as an inherent factor was dominant in manipulating termite foraging behavior compared with external social contexts, suggesting that energy metabolism, especially brain energy metabolism, plays a crucial role in regulating termite foraging behavior.
