The evolution of agriculture in ants |
| |
Authors: | UG Mueller SA Rehner TR Schultz |
| |
Institution: | U. G. Mueller, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado 2072, Balboa, Republic of Panama, and Department of Biology, University of Maryland, College Park, MD 20742, USA. S. A. Rehner, Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apart. |
| |
Abstract: | Cultivation of fungi for food by fungus-growing ants (Attini: Formicidae) originated about 50 million years ago. The subsequent evolutionary history of this agricultural symbiosis was inferred from phylogenetic and population-genetic patterns of 553 cultivars isolated from gardens of "primitive" fungus-growing ants. These patterns indicate that fungus-growing ants succeeded at domesticating multiple cultivars, that the ants are capable of switching to novel cultivars, that single ant species farm a diversity of cultivars, and that cultivars are shared occasionally between distantly related ant species, probably by lateral transfer between ant colonies. |
| |
Keywords: | |
本文献已被 PubMed 等数据库收录! |
|