ArticleApplied and environmental microbiology2015
Acromyrmex Leaf-Cutting Ants Have Simple Gut Microbiota with Nitrogen-Fixing Potential.
Article in Applied and environmental microbiology, 2015. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 43 papers.
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Who cites it
43 citing papers in PubMed, 93 citations in OpenAlex.
- Plastic Diets Drive Microbiome and Metabolic Reprogramming in Wax Moth Larvae (Achroia grisella).Archives of insect biochemistry and physiology · 2026Article
- Bacterial Diversity in Leaf-Cutter Ant Species: Host-Microbe Interactions and Environmental Effects.Neotropical entomology · 2026Article
- Seasonal and spatial dynamics of the microbiome of the polychaete Lanice conchilega in the Wadden Sea.Scientific reports · 2025Article
- Impact of rising temperatures on the bacterial communities of Aphaenogaster ants.Biology open · 2025Article
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- Bacterial communities of fungus-growing ant queens are species-specific and suggest vertical transmission.PloS one · 2025Article
- From the inside out: Were the cuticularPNAS nexus · 2024Article
- A novelmSystems · 2024Article
- Symbiosis, dysbiosis and the impact of horizontal exchange on bacterial microbiomes in higher fungus-gardening ants.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Genotypes and phenotypes in aPeerJ · 2024Article
- Review
- Bacterial diversity in arboreal ant nesting spaces is linked to colony developmental stage.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Article
- Review
- Trachymyrmex septentrionalis Ant Microbiome Assembly Is Unique to Individual Colonies and Castes.mSphere · 2022Article
- The Bacterial and Fungal Gut Microbiota of the Greater Wax Moth,Frontiers in microbiology · 2022Article
- Three phylogenetically distinct and culturable diazotrophs are perennial symbionts of leaf-cutting ants.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- The multidimensional nutritional niche of fungus-cultivar provisioning in free-ranging colonies of a neotropical leafcutter ant.Ecology letters · 2021Article
- Gram-negative bacteria associated with a dominant arboreal ant species outcompete phyllosphere-associated bacteria species in a tropical canopy.Oecologia · 2021Article
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Authors and funding
6 authors at 1 institution in 2 countries.
Funding
Abstract
Ants and termites have independently evolved obligate fungus-farming mutualisms, but their gardening procedures are fundamentally different, as the termites predigest their plant substrate whereas the ants deposit it directly on the fungus garden. Fungus-growing termites retained diverse gut microbiota, but bacterial gut communities in fungus-growing leaf-cutting ants have not been investigated, so it is unknown whether and how they are specialized on an exclusively fungal diet. Here we characterized the gut bacterial community of Panamanian Acromyrmex species, which are dominated by only four bacterial taxa: Wolbachia, Rhizobiales, and two Entomoplasmatales taxa. We show that the Entomoplasmatales can be both intracellular and extracellular across different gut tissues, Wolbachia is mainly but not exclusively intracellular, and the Rhizobiales species is strictly extracellular and confined to the gut lumen, where it forms biofilms along the hindgut cuticle supported by an adhesive matrix of polysaccharides. Tetracycline diets eliminated the Entomoplasmatales symbionts but hardly affected Wolbachia and only moderately reduced the Rhizobiales, suggesting that the latter are protected by the biofilm matrix. We show that the Rhizobiales symbiont produces bacterial NifH proteins that have been associated with the fixation of nitrogen, suggesting that these compartmentalized hindgut symbionts alleviate nutritional constraints emanating from an exclusive fungus garden diet reared on a substrate of leaves.
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