Professor/Curator Cornell University Ithaca, New York
To understand the patterns of biodiversity it is important to consider symbiotic interactions as they can shape animal evolution. In several ant genera symbiotic interactions with microbial communities have been shown to have profound impacts for the host. However, what is true for one ant group may not be true for another. For the microbial communities that have been examined across ants we see variation in the diversity, host factors that structure these communities, and the function these microbes provide for the host. In the herbivorous turtle ants (Cephalotes) their stable symbiotic interactions with gut bacteria have persisted for 45 million years with the gut bacteria synthesizing essential amino acids that are used by the host. Although we know the function for some of these turtle ant-associated bacteria there are still many open questions, including: What host ecological factors structure the microbial communities (16S rRNA and 18S rRNA) of Cephalotes species? 2) Are the bacterial and eukaryotic communities associated with turtle ants interacting? 3) Is the stable, core bacterial community codiversifying with the host? To address these questions, we used multiplex Illumina sequencing of 16S rRNA and 18S rRNA amplicons for about 75 species of Cephalotes collected across their distribution. Our study provides insights about not only how we should analyze data from microbial communities and their interactions with the host, but also advances our understanding of these symbiotic interaction that turtle ants have engaged for more than 45 million years.
