Our findings provide evidence that social animals can evolve to modify their spatial environments as a means to fight epidemics—an effect that could be more widespread than just ants!

Interestingly, when we included social distancing in our simulations, it had a protective effect against transmission that was enhanced by pathogen-induced architectural changes. This shows a synergy between social and architectural epidemic defences!

We then used an agent-based simulation of ant movement and pathogen transmission to show that these pathogen-induced changes to their nests should slow pathogen transmission, protecting the ants against future epidemics.

We found that pathogen-exposed ant groups excavated nests that have transmission inhibitory properties: they are less densely connected, have longer travel routes, are more modular, have entrances spaced further apart, and have less central chambers.

We used CT-scanning to track the 3D growth of the nests of ant groups that had either been exposed to pathogens or a control.

Going into this research, we already new that ants use collective behaviour to fight off epidemic threats: they perform care-giving, social distancing, and social network modifications. We wanted to find-out if ant groups also respond to epidemics by modifying the structure of their nest networks.