Month: September 2022

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE continues with Leafcutter ants. These ancient and sophisticated creatures have figured out advanced fungal crop culture methods, including using living antibiotic cultures that co-evolve with the crop pathogens so resistance is never a persistent problem. They also clonally select the fungal crop for advantageous features. A peek at an advanced society. View in LinkedIn

"GENETIC CHANGES have occurred in the 50 million year symbiosis between the leafcutter ants and the cultivated fungi; the fungi became polyploid, and the ants lost at least two genes, due to their reliance on the fungus." https://lnkd.in/eSpnaXm View in LinkedIn

GENETIC OUTSOURCING. "Mutual dependence of each family of ants on a single clonal crop. This life-time symbiotic matrimony allowed the ants to lose an entire amino acid synthesis pathway as it could become outsourced to the fungal crops." https://lnkd.in/ecXwDCi View in LinkedIn

LEAFCUTTER ANT GENE REDUCTION. "One prediction from this ant's lifestyle is that it has undergone genetic modifications that reflect its obligate dependence on the fungus for nutrients. Analysis of this genome sequence is consistent with this hypothesis, as we find evidence for reductions in genes related to nutrient acquisition." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn

LEAFCUTTER LOST GENES. "A. cephalotes has gene reductions related to nutrient acquisition, and these losses may be compensated by the provision of these nutrients from the fungus. For example, the extensive reduction in serine proteases may reflect the lack of proteins in its diet since the fungus primarily provides nutrients in the form of carbohydrates and free amino acids." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn

NUTRIENT SOURCE. "The loss of the arginine biosynthesis pathway in A. cephalotes may indicate the obligate reliance that it has on the fungus, as arginine is part of the nutrients that it provides to the ant." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn

BORROW, SWALLOW, AND RECYCLE. The Leafcutter ant fungus "produces specialized hyphal swellings called gongylidia that serve as the primary food source of ant colonies. Gongylidia also contain plant biomass-degrading enzymes that become concentrated in ant digestive tracts and are deposited within fecal droplets onto fresh foliar material as ants incorporate it into the fungus garden." https://lnkd.in/emyK7Pa View in LinkedIn

FUNGUS ENZYME ENRICHED POO. "Droplets of this fecal fluid are mixed with the new leaf material that the ants fragment to become fungus garden substrate, and we infer that it is particularly in this time window that the pectinolytic enzymes enhance the efficiency of the symbiosis." https://lnkd.in/egbNxUr View in LinkedIn

SECOND SYMBIOSIS. "Symbiotic N2-fixing bacteria were consistently isolated from the fungus gardens of 80 leaf-cutter ant colonies collected in Argentina, Costa Rica, and Panama. The discovery of N2 fixation within the leaf-cutter ant−microbe symbiosis reveals a previously unrecognized nitrogen source in neotropical ecosystems." https://lnkd.in/eRtgKaB View in LinkedIn

OTHER SYMBIONTS. "The fungus garden is also known to harbor other microbial symbionts including nitrogen-fixing bacteria that provide both fungus and ants with nitrogen, and a diverse community of fungus garden bacteria that appear to help the fungus degrade plant biomass." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn