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Review
. 2002 Nov 26;99(24):15247-9.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.242594799. Epub 2002 Nov 18.

Fungus-farming insects: multiple origins and diverse evolutionary histories

Ulrich G Mueller  1 , Nicole Gerardo
Affiliations
Review

Fungus-farming insects: multiple origins and diverse evolutionary histories

Ulrich G Mueller et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

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Figures

Fig 1.
Fig 1.
Evolutionary histories of fungiculture in termites, ants, and beetles. (a–c) Comparison of the patterns of evolutionary diversification in the insect farmers (left cladograms) and their cultivated fungi (right cladograms). In the left cladograms, farmer lineages are shown in black; nonfarmer relatives are shown in gray. In the right cladograms, fungal cultivar lineages are shown in black; noncultivated feral fungi are shown in gray. The number of independent origins of fungicultural behavior appears as independent farmer lineages in the left cladograms. The number of independently domesticated fungal lineages appears as separate cultivar lineages in the right cladograms. Cladograms synthesize pertinent information from published evolutionary reconstructions, but the number of lineages per group has been reduced because of space constraints. Similarly reduced is the number of nonfarmer lineages and noncultivated fungi interpositioned between, respectively, the farmer lineages and the cultivated fungi. The history of successive diversification therefore is preserved in the cladograms, but evolutionary distances between lineages are reduced in many cases. Information is taken from ref. for the termites, from refs. and for the ants, and from refs. for the beetles. (d) Garden of the fungus-growing termite Macrotermes bellicosus (photo by K. Machielsen). The fungus is grown on fecal pellets that are stacked into walls of the fungus garden (comb). (e) Incipient garden of the fungus-growing ant Atta cephalotes (photo by U.G.M.). The queen is shown resting on the incipient garden that is tended by her first cohort of workers. (f) Gallery of the ambrosia beetle Trypodendron lineatum (photo by S. Kühnholz). The ambrosia fungus appears as the black lining of the gallery. Developing beetle brood is shown in niches off the gallery. Fungal growth is monitored constantly by adult beetles (not shown) patrolling the galleries.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

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