Journal ArticleDOI
The origin of the attine ant-fungus mutualism.
TLDR
The attine ant-fungus mutualism probably arose from adventitious interactions with fungi that grew on walls of nests built in leaf litter, or from a system of fungal myrmecochory in which specialized fungi relied on ants for dispersal and in which the ants fortuitously vectored these fungi from parent to offspring nests prior to a true fungicultural stage.Abstract:
Cultivation of fungus for food originated about 45-65 million years ago in the ancestor of fungus-growing ants (Formicidae, tribe Attini), representing an evolutionary transition from the life of a hunter-gatherer of arthropod prey, nectar, and other plant juices, to the life of a farmer subsisting on cultivated fungi. Seven hypotheses have been suggested for the origin of attine fungiculture, each differing with respect to the substrate used by the ancestral attine ants for fungal cultivation. Phylogenetic information on the cultivated fungi, in conjunction with information on the nesting biology of extant attine ants and their presumed closest relatives, reveal that the attine ancestors probably did not encounter their cultivars-to-be in seed stores (von Ihering 1894), in rotting wood (Forel 1902), as mycorrhizae (Garling 1979), on arthropod corpses (von Ihering 1894) or ant faeces in nest middens (Wheeler 1907). Rather, the attine ant-fungus mutualism probably arose from adventitious interactions with ...read more
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Journal Article
The Insect Societies
TL;DR: The author wished to relate the three phases of research on insects and to express insect sociology as population biology in this detailed survey of knowledge of insect societies.
Journal ArticleDOI
Bacterial-Fungal Interactions: Hyphens between Agricultural, Clinical, Environmental, and Food Microbiologists
Pascale Frey-Klett,P. Burlinson,Aurélie Deveau,Matthieu Barret,Mika T. Tarkka,Alain Sarniguet +5 more
TL;DR: It is shown that in many cases, parallels can be drawn between different scenarios in which bacterial-fungal interactions are important, and how new avenues of investigation may enhance the ability to combat, manipulate, or exploit bacterial- fungal complexes for the economic and practical benefit of humanity.
Journal ArticleDOI
Major evolutionary transitions in ant agriculture
Ted R. Schultz,Seán G. Brady +1 more
TL;DR: This work reconstructs the major evolutionary transitions that produced the five distinct agricultural systems of the fungus-growing ants, the most well studied of the nonhuman agriculturalists, with reference to the first fossil-calibrated, multiple-gene, molecular phylogeny that incorporates the full range of taxonomic diversity within the fungi-growing ant tribe Attini.
Journal ArticleDOI
The Evolution of Agriculture in Insects
Ulrich G. Mueller,Nicole M. Gerardo,Nicole M. Gerardo,Nicole M. Gerardo,Duur K. Aanen,Diana L. Six,Ted R. Schultz +6 more
TL;DR: This work has shown that insect farmers are remarkably similar, suggesting convergent evolution, and that these insect farmers manage, in addition to the primary cultivars, an array of “auxiliary” microbes providing disease suppression...
Journal ArticleDOI
The evolution of fungus-growing termites and their mutualistic fungal symbionts.
Duur K. Aanen,Paul Eggleton,Corinne Rouland-Lefèvre,Tobias Guldberg-Frøslev,Søren Rosendahl,Jacobus J. Boomsma +5 more
TL;DR: This study shows that the symbiosis has a single African origin and that secondary domestication of other fungi or reversal of mutualistic fungi to a free-living state has not occurred, and identifies common characteristics of fungus-farming evolution in termites and ants, which apply despite the major differences between these two insect agricultural systems.
References
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Book
The Insect Societies
TL;DR: In this article, a definitive study of the social structure and symbiotic relationships of termites, social wasps, bees, and ants was conducted. But the authors focused on the relationship between ants and termites.
Book
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
TL;DR: Guns, Germs, and Steel as discussed by the authors argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world, and argues that societies that had had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion and nasty germs and potent weapons of war.
Journal ArticleDOI
Herbivory in relation to plant nitrogen content
TL;DR: The evidence that N is scarce and perhaps a limiting nutrient for many herbivores, and that in response to this selection pressure, many Herbivores have evolved specific behavioral, morphological, physiological, and other adaptations to cope with and uti lize the ambient N levels of their normal haunts is examined.
Journal ArticleDOI
Guns, Germs, and Steel: The Fates of Human Societies
Daniel F. McCall,Jared Diamond +1 more
TL;DR: Guns, Germs, and Steel as discussed by the authors argues that geographical and environmental factors shaped the modern world, and argues that societies that had a head start in food production advanced beyond the hunter-gatherer stage, and then developed religion and nasty germs and potent weapons of war.