He ants usually suppress tendencies of fungus gardens to reproduce sexually
He ants ordinarily suppress tendencies of fungus gardens to reproduce sexually via mushrooms, and as far as these have been reported it remains unclearwhether they’re able to produce viable haploid spores under all-natural conditions .Indications for some admixture and feasible recombination have been identified , but evidence that this relates to meiotic sexual events is lacking.The ca.extant species of Atta and Acromyrmex leafcutting ants all seem to cultivate haplotypes of a (S)-Amlodipine besylate supplier single species L.gongylophorus , however the Leucoagaricus symbionts of Trachymyrmex and Sericomyrmex have higher genetic diversity .However, this insight is according to a single study of T.septentrionalis cultivating four different specieslevel lineages of fungus towards the northern distribution limit in the attine ants .Specieslevel interaction specificity (sensu ) in richer tropical communities has remained unstudied, so it remains unknown no matter whether .Sympatric ant species belonging to the exact same ecological “guild” always associate with multiple symbiont species or sometimes cultivate a single symbiont in spite of options getting obtainable, and .Sympatry implies that nonspecialized hosts normally share all obtainable symbiont species.The objective of our study was to assess interaction specificity of Trachymyrmex and Sericomyrmex fungusgrowing ants living sympatrically within a seasonal lowland rainforest ecosystem in Panama, by genotyping both the ants and their fungus gardens and measuring the activity of plant cellwall degrading enzymes right away upon collection.As their name implies, leafcutting ants primarily forage for fresh leaves, whereas Trachymyrmex and Sericomyrmex species collect a much a lot more diverse spectrum of freshly shed flowers, thin fallen leaf fragments, minor twigs, caterpillar feces and seeds .Fungusgrowing ant foraging profiles vary in space and time, but possess a substantial speciesspecific variance element that could influence fungus garden enzyme activity mainly because carbohydratedegrading enzymes are induced in lieu of constitutively created .By focusing our sampling on a single geographical location and distinct time with the year we ensured as a great deal as you possibly can that foraging spectra reflected natural neighborhood niche differentiation.Variations in fungus garden enzyme activity amongst cultivar genotypes had been thus likely to reflect functionality variations of direct mutualistic relevance .Approaches Fungusgrowing ants had been collected as whole colonies with fungus gardens in May possibly in Parque National Soberan , Panama (the Gamboa area and forest along Pipeline Road) ten colonies of T.cornetzi (Forel), nine colonies of T.sp nine colonies of T.zeteki (Weber), and ten colonies of Sericomyrmex amabilis (Wheeler), giving a total of colonies that were brought for the Smithsonian Tropical Study Institute (STRI) laboratory in Gamboa, Panama.Trachymyrmex sp.(“blackhead”) is a recognized undescribed species that occurs sympatricallyDe Fine Licht and Boomsma BMC Evolutionary Biology , www.biomedcentral.comPage ofwith T.cornetzi in its investigated variety in Panama .These Trachymyrmex and Sericomyrmex species had been previously shown to possess huge randomly mating populations at our sampling site (Parque National Soberan) , PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325703 so the probability that we sampled colonies with current widespread descent was negligible.Fungal cultivar and host ant genotypingFungal DNA was extracted by placing smaller tufts of mycelium from alcohol preserved fungus garden material in l of a Chelex resin (SigmaAldrich, cat.no).