ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2011
Evolution of cold-tolerant fungal symbionts permits winter fungiculture by leafcutter ants at the northern frontier of a tropical ant-fungus symbiosis.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2011. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 39 papers.
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39 citing papers in PubMed.
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- Hymenopteran-specific TRPA channel from the Texas leaf cutter ant (Atta texana) is heat and cold activated and expression correlates with environmental temperature.Insect science · 2025Article
- Temperature influences outcomes of an environmentally acquired symbiosis.The ISME journal · 2025Article
- Microbiome composition ofFrontiers in ecology and evolution · 2025Article
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- Comparison of gut bacterial communities ofBiodiversity data journal · 2023Article
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- Life history, nest longevity, sex ratio, and nest architecture of the fungus-growing ant Mycetosoritis hartmanni (Formicidae: Attina).PloS one · 2023Article
- Unexpected costs of extended phenotypes: nest features determine the effect of fires on leaf cutter ant's demography.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Pervasive effects ofBiology letters · 2021Article
- Thermal niches of specialized gut symbionts: the case of social bees.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- New distributional records for ants and the evaluation of ant species richness and endemism patterns in Mexico.Biodiversity data journal · 2021Article
- Experimental Warming Reduces Survival, Cold Tolerance, and Gut Prokaryotic Diversity of the Eastern Subterranean Termite,Frontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Nutritional niches reveal fundamental domestication trade-offs in fungus-farming ants.Nature ecology & evolution · 2021Article
- Article
- Pervasive Effects ofmBio · 2020Article
- (My Microbiome) Would Walk 10,000 miles: Maintenance and Turnover of Microbial Communities in Introduced Dung Beetles.Microbial ecology · 2020Article
- Expanding the mutualistic niche: parallel symbiont turnover along climatic gradients.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2020Article
- Genome of the webworm Hyphantria cunea unveils genetic adaptations supporting its rapid invasion and spread.BMC genomics · 2020Article
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11 authors.
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No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
The obligate mutualism between leafcutter ants and their Attamyces fungi originated 8 to 12 million years ago in the tropics, but extends today also into temperate regions in South and North America. The northernmost leafcutter ant Atta texana sustains fungiculture during winter temperatures that would harm the cold-sensitive Attamyces cultivars of tropical leafcutter ants. Cold-tolerance of Attamyces cultivars increases with winter harshness along a south-to-north temperature gradient across the range of A. texana, indicating selection for cold-tolerant Attamyces variants along the temperature cline. Ecological niche modeling corroborates winter temperature as a key range-limiting factor impeding northward expansion of A. texana. The northernmost A. texana populations are able to sustain fungiculture throughout winter because of their cold-adapted fungi and because of seasonal, vertical garden relocation (maintaining gardens deep in the ground in winter to protect them from extreme cold, then moving gardens to warmer, shallow depths in spring). Although the origin of leafcutter fungiculture was an evolutionary breakthrough that revolutionized the food niche of tropical fungus-growing ants, the original adaptations of this host-microbe symbiosis to tropical temperatures and the dependence on cold-sensitive fungal symbionts eventually constrained expansion into temperate habitats. Evolution of cold-tolerant fungi within the symbiosis relaxed constraints on winter fungiculture at the northern frontier of the leafcutter ant distribution, thereby expanding the ecological niche of an obligate host-microbe symbiosis.
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