ArticleScientific reports2019
Disease-free monoculture farming by fungus-growing termites.
Article in Scientific reports, 2019. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
What it found
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The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
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Who cites it
23 citing papers in PubMed, 64 citations in OpenAlex.
- Article
- Antibacterial activity of fungus comb extracts from Senegalese fungus-farming termites.AMB Express · 2025Article
- Emerging Fungal Pathogens Warfare, Fungi-Like Organisms, and the World's Major Crops: Lessons from the Past and Solutions for the Future.Current microbiology · 2025Review
- Volatile Organic Compounds of Diverse Origins and Their Changes Associated With Cultivar Decay in a Fungus-Farming Termite.Environmental microbiology · 2025Article
- Comparative genomics unravels a rich set of biosynthetic gene clusters with distinct evolutionary trajectories across fungal species (Termitomyces) farmed by termites.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Investigation into how Odontotermes obesus maintains a predominantly Termitomyces monoculture in their fungus combs suggests a potential partnership with both fungi and bacteria.Communications biology · 2024Article
- Colour-analyzer: a new dual colour model-based imaging tool to quantify plant disease.Plant methods · 2024Article
- Exploring the diversity of microbes and natural products from fungus-growing termite tripartite symbiosis.Engineering microbiology · 2024Review
- Non-ribosomal peptide synthase profiles remain structurally similar despite minimally shared features across fungus-farming termite microbiomes.ISME communications · 2024Article
- Body size of fungus-growing termites infers on the volume and density of their fungal cultivar.Royal Society open science · 2023Article
- Adaptations of Pseudoxylaria towards a comb-associated lifestyle in fungus-farming termite colonies.The ISME journal · 2023Article
- Termite-engineered microbial communities of termite nest structures: a new dimension to the extended phenotype.FEMS microbiology reviews · 2022Review
- The chemical ecology of the fungus-farming termite symbiosis.Natural product reports · 2022Review
- Species- and Caste-Specific Gut Metabolomes in Fungus-Farming Termites.Metabolites · 2021Article
- The Termite Fungal CultivarmBio · 2021Article
- GNPS-guided discovery of xylacremolide C and D, evaluation of their putative biosynthetic origin and bioactivity studies of xylacremolide A and B.RSC advances · 2021Article
- Article
- Antifungals, arthropods and antifungal resistance prevention: lessons from ecological interactions.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
- Land Management Legacy Affects Abundance and Function of theFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
- Polyene-ProducingFrontiers in microbiology · 2021Article
Corrections and comments
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Authors and funding
10 authors at 4 institutions in 4 countries.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Fungus-growing termites engage in an obligate mutualistic relationship with Termitomyces fungi, which they maintain in monocultures on specialised fungus comb structures, without apparent problems with infectious diseases. While other fungi have been reported in the symbiosis, detailed comb fungal community analyses have been lacking. Here we use culture-dependent and -independent methods to characterise fungus comb mycobiotas from three fungus-growing termite species (two genera). Internal Transcribed Spacer (ITS) gene analyses using 454 pyrosequencing and Illumina MiSeq showed that non-Termitomyces fungi were essentially absent in fungus combs, and that Termitomyces fungal crops are maintained in monocultures as heterokaryons with two or three abundant ITS variants in a single fungal strain. To explore whether the essential absence of other fungi within fungus combs is potentially due to the production of antifungal metabolites by Termitomyces or comb bacteria, we performed in vitro assays and found that both Termitomyces and chemical extracts of fungus comb material can inhibit potential fungal antagonists. Chemical analyses of fungus comb material point to a highly complex metabolome, including compounds with the potential to play roles in mediating these contaminant-free farming conditions in the termite symbiosis.
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Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.