ArticleGenome biology and evolution2018
Genome Evolution of Bartonellaceae Symbionts of Ants at the Opposite Ends of the Trophic Scale.
Article in Genome biology and evolution, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 24 papers.
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Who cites it
24 citing papers in PubMed, 59 citations in OpenAlex.
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- Gut Symbiont-Driven Adaptive Evolution of Herbivorous Insect-Plant Interactions and Its Ecological Implications.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2025Review
- The littler things that run the little things that run the world.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Contrasting Genomic Trajectories of Bartonellaceae Symbionts of Planthoppers.Genome biology and evolution · 2025Article
- 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
- Dietary niche shapes bacterial community in Indo-Pacific ants.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Microbial Symbiosis in Lepidoptera: Analyzing the Gut Microbiota for Sustainable Pest Management.Biology · 2025Review
- Open and closed economies as possible alternative strategies to resource heterogeneity in ants.Biology open · 2025Article
- A novelmSystems · 2024Article
- Physiological and evolutionary contexts of a new symbiotic species from the nitrogen-recycling gut community of turtle ants.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- The pivotal roles of gut microbiota in insect plant interactions for sustainable pest management.NPJ biofilms and microbiomes · 2023Review
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- Untangling the complex interactions between turtle ants and their microbial partners.Animal microbiome · 2023Article
- Distinct gut bacterial composition inFrontiers in microbiology · 2023Article
- Convergent evolution of a labile nutritional symbiosis in ants.The ISME journal · 2022Article
- Nitrogen Acquisition Strategies Mediated by Insect Symbionts: A Review of Their Mechanisms, Methodologies, and Case Studies.Insects · 2022Review
- Three phylogenetically distinct and culturable diazotrophs are perennial symbionts of leaf-cutting ants.Ecology and evolution · 2021Article
- Localization of bacterial communities within gut compartments acrossApplied and environmental microbiology · 2021Article
- Bats are key hosts in the radiation of mammal-associated Bartonella bacteria.Infection, genetics and evolution : journal of molecular epidemiology and evolutionary genetics in infectious diseases · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
8 authors at 6 institutions in 3 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Many insects rely on bacterial symbionts to supply essential amino acids and vitamins that are deficient in their diets, but metabolic comparisons of closely related gut bacteria in insects with different dietary preferences have not been performed. Here, we demonstrate that herbivorous ants of the genus Dolichoderus from the Peruvian Amazon host bacteria of the family Bartonellaceae, known for establishing chronic or pathogenic infections in mammals. We detected these bacteria in all studied Dolichoderus species, and found that they reside in the midgut wall, that is, the same location as many previously described nutritional endosymbionts of insects. The genomic analysis of four divergent strains infecting different Dolichoderus species revealed genes encoding pathways for nitrogen recycling and biosynthesis of several vitamins and all essential amino acids. In contrast, several biosynthetic pathways have been lost, whereas genes for the import and conversion of histidine and arginine to glutamine have been retained in the genome of a closely related gut bacterium of the carnivorous ant Harpegnathos saltator. The broad biosynthetic repertoire in Bartonellaceae of herbivorous ants resembled that of gut bacteria of honeybees that likewise feed on carbohydrate-rich diets. Taken together, the broad distribution of Bartonellaceae across Dolichoderus ants, their small genome sizes, the specific location within hosts, and the broad biosynthetic capability suggest that these bacteria are nutritional symbionts in herbivorous ants. The results highlight the important role of the host nutritional biology for the genomic evolution of the gut microbiota-and conversely, the importance of the microbiota for the nutrition of hosts.
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