ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2017
Dry habitats were crucibles of domestication in the evolution of agriculture in ants.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2017. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 50 papers.
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50 citing papers in PubMed.
- High-throughput phenomics of global ant biodiversity.Nature methods · 2026Article
- Article
- Novel killer yeasts and toxins from the gardens of fungus-growing ants.Applied and environmental microbiology · 2026Article
- Phylogenetic insights into the diversification of cutting strategies in leaf-cutting ants.Frontiers in insect science · 2026Article
- You are what your fungus eats: diet shapes the microbial garden of a fungus-growing ant.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2025Article
- Evaluating UCE Data Adequacy and Integrating Uncertainty in a Comprehensive Phylogeny of Ants.Systematic biology · 2025Article
- Phylogenomics Resolve the Systematics and Biogeography of the Ant Tribe Myrmicini and Tribal Relationships within the Hyperdiverse Ant Subfamily Myrmicinae.Systematic biology · 2025Article
- Evidence of cellular adaptations in a fungal cultivar promoting resource exchange with leafcutter ant farmers.Biology letters · 2025Article
- Digging into the evolutionary history of the fungus-growing-ant symbiont, Escovopsis (Hypocreaceae).Communications biology · 2025Article
- Size-dependent variation in thermal tolerance among tropical bee species.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Bacterial communities of fungus-growing ant queens are species-specific and suggest vertical transmission.PloS one · 2025Article
- Shifts in Chromosome Evolution Rates Shape the Karyotype Patterns of Leafcutting Ants.Ecology and evolution · 2024Article
- Genomic Signatures of Domestication in a Fungus Obligately Farmed by Leafcutter Ants.Molecular biology and evolution · 2024Article
- From the inside out: Were the cuticularPNAS nexus · 2024Article
- Article
- De novo assembly of the complete mitochondrial genome of Mycetophylax simplex Emery, 1888 through organelle targeting revels no substantial expansion of gene spacers, but rather some slightly shorter genes.Molecular genetics and genomics : MGG · 2024Article
- The fungusFrontiers in fungal biology · 2024Review
- Mutualistic interactions between ants and fungi: A review.Ecology and evolution · 2023Review
- An Old World leaf-cutting, fungus-growing ant: A case of convergent evolution.Ecology and evolution · 2023Article
- Genomic diversification of the specialized parasite of the fungus-growing ant symbiosis.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2022Article
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7 authors.
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Abstract
The evolution of ant agriculture, as practised by the fungus-farming 'attine' ants, is thought to have arisen in the wet rainforests of South America about 55-65 Ma. Most subsequent attine agricultural evolution, including the domestication event that produced the ancestor of higher attine cultivars, is likewise hypothesized to have occurred in South American rainforests. The 'out-of-the-rainforest' hypothesis, while generally accepted, has never been tested in a phylogenetic context. It also presents a problem for explaining how fungal domestication might have occurred, given that isolation from free-living populations is required. Here, we use phylogenomic data from ultra-conserved element (UCE) loci to reconstruct the evolutionary history of fungus-farming ants, reduce topological uncertainty, and identify the closest non-fungus-growing ant relative. Using the phylogeny we infer the history of attine agricultural systems, habitat preference and biogeography. Our results show that the out-of-the-rainforest hypothesis is correct with regard to the origin of attine ant agriculture; however, contrary to expectation, we find that the transition from lower to higher agriculture is very likely to have occurred in a seasonally dry habitat, inhospitable to the growth of free-living populations of attine fungal cultivars. We suggest that dry habitats favoured the isolation of attine cultivars over the evolutionary time spans necessary for domestication to occur.
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