Hidden Diversity in Brain Worms in Zombie Ants

open_access
Open Access
Author:
Demartin, Haley Olivia
Area of Honors:
Biology
Degree:
Bachelor of Science
Document Type:
Thesis
Thesis Supervisors:
Dr. David Peter Hughes, Thesis Supervisor
Dr. James Harold Marden, Thesis Honors Advisor
Keywords:
Nematoda
trematoda
Ants
Cestoda
Worms
Parasite
Abstract:
Ants, as one of the oldest and most diverse groups of social animals on Earth, can provide insight into various parasite-host relationships. Studying ants and their interactions with parasites over evolutionary time can advance our knowledge of the spread of disease throughout a society in general. In this research paper, I focus on worms infecting ants. The principal parasitic worms affecting ants are in the phylum Nematoda and the classes of Cestoda and Trematoda. Much of the previous research endeavors that have been completed on the study of worms infecting ants have been lost to time and language. The time and effort dedicated by other scientists to the study of this important relationship needs to be unearthed and that is what I attempted to do in this paper. Therefore I conducted a detailed library study of the diversity of worm parasite in ants, which involved extensive exploration of both the non-digitized corpus and non-English language corpus. Not only did I find more ant-worm parasite association records than previously known, but also I uncovered many significant records of parasite prevalence and distribution. My work lays the foundation for more research that can now be done on this subject. Furthermore, my work will hopefully resolve the ecological drivers of ant-parasite relationships and their evolutionary implications.