ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2002
Tetraponera ants have gut symbionts related to nitrogen-fixing root-nodule bacteria.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2002. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 63 papers, 1 of them a synthesis that pooled it.
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Who cites it
63 citing papers in PubMed, 1 synthesis or guideline pooled it.
- A veritable menagerie of heritable bacteria from ants, butterflies, and beyond: broad molecular surveys and a systematic review.PloS one · 2012Pooled it
- Bacterial Diversity in Leaf-Cutter Ant Species: Host-Microbe Interactions and Environmental Effects.Neotropical entomology · 2026Article
- Symbiotic solutions for colony nutrition: Conserved nitrogen recycling within the bacterial pouch ofProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Characterization of larval gut microbiota of two endoparasitoid wasps associated with their common host,Microbiology spectrum · 2024Article
- Nutrient supplementation by genome-eroded Burkholderia symbionts of scale insects.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Bacterial diversity in arboreal ant nesting spaces is linked to colony developmental stage.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Different roles of host and habitat in determining the microbial communities of plant-feeding true bugs.Microbiome · 2023Article
- Effects of anthropogenic stress on hosts and their microbiomes: Treated wastewater alters performance and gut microbiome of a key detritivore (Evolutionary applications · 2023Article
- Nitrogen fixation by diverse diazotrophic communities can support population growth of arboreal ants.BMC biology · 2022Article
- Microbiome diversity and reproductive incompatibility induced by the prevalent endosymbiontEcology and evolution · 2021Article
- Three phylogenetically distinct and culturable diazotrophs are perennial symbionts of leaf-cutting ants.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Evaluation of Sample Preservation Approaches for Better Insect Microbiome Research According to Next-Generation and Third-Generation Sequencing.Microbial ecology · 2021Article
- The bacterial and fungal community composition in time and space in the nest mounds of the ant Formica exsecta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae).MicrobiologyOpen · 2021Article
- Article
- Lactic Acid Bacteria Are Prevalent in the Infrabuccal Pockets and Crops of Ants That Prefer Aphid Honeydew.Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Insights Into the Ecological Role ofFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Immune challenge reduces gut microbial diversity and triggers fertility-dependent gene expression changes in a social insect.BMC genomics · 2020Article
- Gut Bacteria in the Holometabola: A Review of Obligate and Facultative Symbionts.Journal of insect science (Online) · 2020Review
- Article
- Volatiles from the Mandibular Gland Reservoir Content ofMolecules (Basel, Switzerland) · 2019Article
3 more citing papers are in PubMed but not listed here.
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
4 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Some Tetraponera ants (Formicidae, Pseudomyrmecinae) subsist almost entirely on amino acid deficient honeydew secretions of pseudococcids and harbour a dense aggregation of bacterial symbionts in a unique pouch-shaped organ at the junction of the midgut and the intestine. The organ is surrounded by a network of intruding tracheae and Malpighian tubules, suggesting that these bacteria are involved in the oxidative recycling of nitrogen-rich metabolic waste. We have examined the ultrastructure of these bacteria and have amplified, cloned and sequenced ribosomal RNA-encoding genes, showing that the ant pouch contains a series of close relatives of Flavobacteria and Rhizobium, Methylobacterium, Burkholderia and Pseudomonas nitrogen-fixing root-nodule bacteria. We argue that pouch bacteria have been repeatedly 'domesticated' by the ants as nitrogen-recycling endosymbionts. This ant-associated community of mutualists is, to our knowledge, the first finding of symbionts related to root-nodule bacteria in animals.
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