首页 | 本学科首页   官方微博 | 高级检索  
     检索      


Coevolved crypts and exocrine glands support mutualistic bacteria in fungus-growing ants
Authors:Currie Cameron R  Poulsen Michael  Mendenhall John  Boomsma Jacobus J  Billen Johan
Institution:Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA. currie@bact.wisc.edu
Abstract:Attine ants engage in a quadripartite symbiosis with fungi they cultivate for food, specialized garden parasites, and parasite-inhibiting bacteria. Molecular phylogenetic evidence supports an ancient host-pathogen association between the ant-cultivar mutualism and the garden parasite. Here we show that ants rear the antibiotic-producing bacteria in elaborate cuticular crypts, supported by unique exocrine glands, and that these structures have been highly modified across the ants' evolutionary history. This specialized structural evolution, together with the absence of these bacteria and modifications in other ant genera that do not grow fungus, indicate that the bacteria have an ancient and coevolved association with the ants, their fungal cultivar, and the garden parasite.
Keywords:
本文献已被 PubMed 等数据库收录!
设为首页 | 免责声明 | 关于勤云 | 加入收藏

Copyright©北京勤云科技发展有限公司  京ICP备09084417号