Skip to main page content
U.S. flag

An official website of the United States government

Dot gov

The .gov means it’s official.
Federal government websites often end in .gov or .mil. Before sharing sensitive information, make sure you’re on a federal government site.

Https

The site is secure.
The https:// ensures that you are connecting to the official website and that any information you provide is encrypted and transmitted securely.

Access keys NCBI Homepage MyNCBI Homepage Main Content Main Navigation
Comment
. 2009 Oct 20;106(42):17611-2.
doi: 10.1073/pnas.0910004106. Epub 2009 Oct 13.

Rethinking crop-disease management in fungus-growing ants

Jacobus J Boomsma  1 , Duur K Aanen
Affiliations
Comment

Rethinking crop-disease management in fungus-growing ants

Jacobus J Boomsma et al. Proc Natl Acad Sci U S A. .
No abstract available

PubMed Disclaimer

Conflict of interest statement

The authors declare no conflict of interest.

Figures

Fig. 1.
Fig. 1.
The relevant levels of selection and competition in interactions between attine ants and cuticular actinomycetes. The study by Sen et al. (7) indicates that we need: (i) data on how competition affects the extent of useful antibiotic production, both for the bacteria and their hosts, at each of these levels and (ii) a better understanding of the proportion of total actinomycete fitness that is obtained directly, via horizontal transmission to other workers, colonies, or the environment, and indirectly, via vertical transmission to daughter colonies (top arrows). All effects marked with horizontal arrows could harm the host ants, but do not necessarily do so, except at the lowest level where competition among actinomycete strains could select for increased antibiotics production to the benefit of the host. The general prediction is that selection for host-beneficial traits increases with increasing selection at higher levels.
See this image and copyright information in PMC

Comment on

References

    1. Mueller UG, Rehner SA, Schultz TR. The evolution of agriculture in ants. Science. 1998;281:2034–2038. - PubMed
    1. Schultz TR, Brady SG. Major evolutionary transitions in ant agriculture. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 2008;105:5435–5440. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Currie CR, Scott JA, Summerbell RC, Malloch D. Fungus-growing ants use antibiotic-producing bacteria to control garden parasites. Nature. 1999;398:701–704.
    1. Currie CR, Mueller UG, Malloch D. The agricultural pathology of ant fungus gardens. Proc Natl Acad Sci USA. 1999;96:7998–8002. - PMC - PubMed
    1. Poulsen M, Boomsma JJ. Mutualistic fungi control crop diversity in fungus-growing ants. Science. 2005;307:741–744. - PubMed

LinkOut - more resources