, Universitetsparken , DK Copenhagen, Denmark Present address Section for Organismal Biology, Division
, Universitetsparken , DK Copenhagen, Denmark Present address Section for Organismal Biology, Division of Plant and Environmental Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Thorvaldsensvej , DK Frederiksberg, Denmark De Fine Licht and Boomsma; licensee BioMed Central Ltd.This is an Open Access post distributed below the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License (creativecommons.orglicensesby), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original perform is adequately credited.The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (creativecommons.orgpublicdomainzero) applies for the information created available in this write-up, unless otherwise stated.De Fine Licht and Boomsma BMC Evolutionary Biology , www.biomedcentral.comPage ofBackground Considerable progress has been made in understanding the origins, elaborations and occasional collapse of obligate symbiotic mutualisms .Probably the most vital aspects for understanding the evolutionary stability of such interactions is their degree of uni or bilateral specialization and integrative complementarity .Many current models have addressed inquiries of this type, either emphasizing the dynamics of partner variation in onetoone interactions , or that hosts will settle for mixed communities of symbionts dominated by an unambiguous mutualist .Empirical research have also yielded surprises, for example displaying that a number of Central American figs have a number of pollinating wasps that are morphologically indistinguishable , and that mountain pine beetles (Dendroctonus ponderosae) cultivate numerous fungal species segregating in distinct populations with variable recombination prices .Normally, even so, studies of this kind are constrained by the need for local biodiversity to be higher adequate to receive adequate statistical power, and by the regions exactly where such species richness is present having many cryptic species so that interactionspecificity are going to be underestimated.This underlines that it really is of crucial significance that empirical studies use genetic markers to establish the true specieslevel diversity of local guilds of hosts and symbionts prior to embarking on analyses of interaction specificity.Here we document variation in interaction specificity and genetic diversity in a millionyearold obligate nutritional mutualism in between ants and fungi and measure functional enzyme activity variation across sympatric host and symbiont species.The fungusgrowing attine ants comprise extant species, which all obligately cultivate fungus gardens for meals whilst providing them with scavenged or actively harvested plant material as manure.Fungus gardens consist of a single basidiomycete fungal strain that may be cultivated in monoculture, but in addition contains bacteria and yeasts in variable prevalences .As a rule of PubMed ID:http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/21325134 thumb, the attine ants show a sizable degree of cophylogenetic congruence with their fungal cultivars at basal levels, however they often share cultivars in the antgenus level, which has been described as a form of ‘diffuse’ coevolution .The phylogenetically derived higherattine genera Trachymyrmex, Sericomyrmex, Acromyrmex and Atta cultivate specialized Leucocoprinaceous fungi which have only been located in association with attine ants .Virgin queens typically carry a fragment of mycelium from her maternal fungus garden as inoculum when founding new colonies , but this vertically transmission routine might be SCH 58261 Antagonist punctuated by occasional events of secondary horizontal exchange .T.