EvoLunch Seminar: Florian Strahodinsky (Institute of Science and Technology Austria, AT)
EvoLunch Seminar
The basic biology of a tri-partite host-pathogen relationship
"The basic biology of a tri-partite host-pathogen relationship"
Wednesday 12th March 2025
11:00 CET
Mondi 2a, Central Building, ISTA
Hybrid Meeting (for zoom link, email evolunch.seminar@ist.ac.at)
Abstract
Ant colonies face a multitude of pathogens, against which they are protected by individual and collective disease defense. In the latter, colony members cooperatively perform sanitary care behaviors and hygiene measures, which allows disease control by “social immunity”. It offers effective means to fend off bacteria, fungi and viruses, but the impact in worm-borne disease in less known. By using a complex nematode-bacteria pathogen model, we want to explore the effects of nematode disease in ant colonies. We found that ant brood is vulnerable to nematode attacks, whereas adult life stages are resistant. However, group living significantly increases the chances of survival in ant brood, as the adults offer protection. In addition, worker ants play a crucial role in preventing disease transmission and significantly reduce the transmission success of nematodes. Our evidence suggests that the previous findings are linked to sanitary behaviors such as self-grooming. In the end, we could disentangle the pathogen system to study the individual pathogens by applying them to ant larvae.
Bio
Florian studied Medical and Pharmaceutical Biotechnology at IMC Fachhochschule Krems (Austria), working primarily on cell biology and oncology topics during this time. Being a passionate myrmecologist, he joined the Cremer lab for an internship in 2019 and swapped field to work on nematode disease and social immunity in ants. He then completed his studies in the same year and immediately joined the ISTA PhD program to stay in the social immunity lab and continue with the project he started earlier during the internship. Currently, Florian is writing up his findings and finishing his thesis.