Fig. 1
From: Trade-offs between immunity and competitive ability in fighting ant males
Fighting ability of infected males in dependence of infection dose and stage. Fight outcome for infected males compared to their healthy rival males at (a) the early (green) and (b) the late (blue) stage of infection. Pie charts show the proportion of fights that ended undecided with either both males still alive (white), or both males dead (black), or decided with one clear winner and loser (grey; Table S2). In the decided fights (grey offset slice with coloured outline), infected males had a higher risk of losing the fight than by chance (dotted line) after exposure to a high, but not low pathogen dose (bars depict the proportion of fights lost by the infected male; darker tone reflects higher dose; based on a total of 347 fights, detailed in Table S1). The aggression level of infected males (c,d) did not differ from that of their healthy rivals across infection stage or level, whilst workers showed increased aggression only to late-stage high-level infected males (e,f). Individual data points depict aggression by (c,d) and towards (e,f) each infected male compared to its healthy rival (aggressioninfected−healthy, i.e. resulting in a zero value under equal aggression and positive values for higher aggression), boxes give the 95% CI and median as black line (based on 112 observed fights between healthy and infected males). The added risk of dying for infected males when fighting (g,h) compared to their baseline mortality when non-fighting during the same period (Fig. S1; Table S3) was significantly increased for males in the early and late stage of a high-level infection, where their mortality risk during fight increased 2.2-fold at the early stage and 1.4-fold at the late-stage. Bars depict the fold change of mortality during combat to the males’ respective baseline mortality (value of 1 depicts equal mortality). Based on 201 fights. Significant deviation from chance (50:50) (a,b), from the healthy male (c-f) and from their non-fighting baseline mortality (g,h) given for each group. * p < 0.05, *** p < 0.001, ns = non-significant