Molecular and ultrastructural profiles of the symbionts in Cephalotes ants

Bution, Murillo Lino; Bresil, C.; Destéfano, Ricardo Henri Rodrigues; Tango, Maria Flora de Almeida; Silveira, W. Dias da; Paulino, Luciana Campos; Caetano, Flávio Henrique; Solferini, Vera Nisaka

doi:10.1016/j.micron.2010.01.011

Cited by 6 publications

(4 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Combined with other discoveries (Bution et al . ; Sanders et al . ), our findings suggest gut community stability is a hallmark of the Cephalotes genus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

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Correlates of gut community composition across an ant species (Cephalotes varians) elucidate causes and consequences of symbiotic variability

et al. 2013

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Insect guts are often colonized by multispecies microbial communities that play integral roles in nutrition, digestion and defence. Community composition can differ across host species with increasing dietary and genetic divergence, yet gut microbiota can also vary between conspecific hosts and across an individual's lifespan. Through exploration of such intraspecific variation and its correlates, molecular profiling of microbial communities can generate and test hypotheses on the causes and consequences of symbioses. In this study, we used 454 pyrosequencing and TRFLP to achieve these goals in an herbivorous ant, Cephalotes varians, exploring variation in bacterial communities across colonies, populations and workers reared on different diets. C. varians bacterial communities were dominated by 16 core species present in over two-thirds of the sampled colonies. Core species comprised multiple genotypes, or strains and hailed from ant-specific clades containing relatives from other Cephalotes species. Yet three were detected in environmental samples, suggesting the potential for environmental acquisition. In spite of their prevalence and long-standing relationships with Cephalotes ants, the relative abundance and genotypic composition of core species varied across colonies. Diet-induced plasticity is a likely cause, but only pollen-based diets had consistent effects, altering the abundance of two types of bacteria. Additional factors, such as host age, genetics, chance or natural selection, must therefore shape natural variation. Future studies on these possibilities and on bacterial contributions to the use of pollen, a widespread food source across Cephalotes, will be important steps in developing C. varians as a model for studying widespread social insect-bacteria symbioses.

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“…Combined with other discoveries (Bution et al . ; Sanders et al . ), our findings suggest gut community stability is a hallmark of the Cephalotes genus.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 98%

“…But to date few studies have explored natural intraspecific variation of symbiotic bacteria from ant guts (see Bution et al . and Lee et al . for exceptions; see also Andersen et al .…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 90%

Correlates of gut community composition across an ant species (Cephalotes varians) elucidate causes and consequences of symbiotic variability

et al. 2013

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“…(57). The ileum-the anterior region of the hindgut-possesses structural adaptations harboring microbial symbionts (58,59), while bacteria are also found in association with microvilli in the midgut (60,61). In Tetraponera (subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae), a pouch in the ileum harbors symbiotic bacteria (62,63).…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Surveying the Microbiome of Ants: Comparing 454 Pyrosequencing with Traditional Methods To Uncover Bacterial Diversity

Kautz

Rubin

Russell

et al. 2013

Appl Environ Microbiol

112

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We are only beginning to understand the depth and breadth of microbial associations across the eukaryotic tree of life. Reliably assessing bacterial diversity is a key challenge, and next-generation sequencing approaches are facilitating this endeavor. In this study, we used 16S rRNA amplicon pyrosequencing to survey microbial diversity in ants. We compared 454 libraries with Sanger-sequenced clone libraries as well as cultivation of live bacteria. Pyrosequencing yielded 95,656 bacterial 16S rRNA reads from 19 samples derived from four colonies of one ant species. The most dominant bacterial orders in the microbiome of the turtle ant Cephalotes varians were Rhizobiales, Burkholderiales, Opitutales, Xanthomonadales, and Campylobacterales, as revealed through both 454 sequencing and cloning. Even after stringent quality filtering, pyrosequencing recovered 445 microbe operational taxonomic units (OTUs) not detected with traditional techniques. In comparing bacterial communities associated with specific tissues, we found that gut tissues had significantly higher diversity than nongut tissues, and many of the OTUs identified from these groups clustered within ant-specific lineages, indicating a deep coevolutionary history of Cephalotes ants and their associated microbes. These lineages likely function as nutritional symbionts. One of four ant colonies investigated was infected with a Spiroplasma sp. (order Entomoplasmatales), a potential ant pathogen. Our work shows that the microbiome associated with Cephalotes varians is dominated by a few dozen bacterial lineages and that 454 sequencing is a cost-efficient tool to screen ant symbiont diversity.

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“…In three species of Cephalotes , the ileum represents the largest portion of the digestive tract, and electron micrographs reveal bacterial biofilms apparently adhering to the hindgut intima via pilli‐like extensions, suggesting that bacteria utilize the ant excretions (Roche & Wheeler 1997; Bution & Caetano 2010a). When we also consider that some of these bacteria were undergoing binary fission, it would appear that they are adapted to a lifestyle in the gut environment (Bution et al. 2010).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Highly similar microbial communities are shared among related and trophically similar ant species

et al. 2012

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Ants dominate many terrestrial ecosystems, yet we know little about their nutritional physiology and ecology. While traditionally viewed as predators and scavengers, recent isotopic studies revealed that many dominant ant species are functional herbivores. As with other insects with nitrogen-poor diets, it is hypothesized that these ants rely on symbiotic bacteria for nutritional supplementation. In this study, we used cloning and 16S sequencing to further characterize the bacterial flora of several herbivorous ants, while also examining the beta diversity of bacterial communities within and between ant species from different trophic levels. Through estimating phylogenetic overlap between these communities, we tested the hypothesis that ecologically or phylogenetically similar groups of ants harbor similar microbial flora. Our findings reveal: (i) clear differences in bacterial communities harbored by predatory and herbivorous ants; (ii) notable similarities among communities from distantly related herbivorous ants and (iii) similar communities shared by different predatory army ant species. Focusing on one herbivorous ant tribe, the Cephalotini, we detected five major bacterial taxa that likely represent the core microbiota. Metabolic functions of bacterial relatives suggest that these microbes may play roles in fixing, recycling, or upgrading nitrogen. Overall, our findings reveal that similar microbial communities are harbored by ants from similar trophic niches and, to a greater extent, by related ants from the same colonies, species, genera, and tribes. These trends hint at coevolved histories between ants and microbes, suggesting new possibilities for roles of bacteria in the evolution of both herbivores and carnivores from the ant family Formicidae.

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Molecular and ultrastructural profiles of the symbionts in Cephalotes ants

Cited by 6 publications

References 11 publications

Correlates of gut community composition across an ant species (Cephalotes varians) elucidate causes and consequences of symbiotic variability

Correlates of gut community composition across an ant species (Cephalotes varians) elucidate causes and consequences of symbiotic variability

Surveying the Microbiome of Ants: Comparing 454 Pyrosequencing with Traditional Methods To Uncover Bacterial Diversity

Highly similar microbial communities are shared among related and trophically similar ant species

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