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Journal article
Localization of Bacterial Communities within Gut Compartments across Cephalotes Turtle Ants
Applied and environmental microbiology, v 87(8)
26 Mar 2021
PMID: 33579688
Featured in Collection : UN Sustainable Development Goals @ Drexel
Abstract
Gut compartments play an important role in structuring the microbial community within individual ants. The gut chambers of the turtle ant digestive tract differ remarkably in symbiont abundance and diversity.
ABSTRACT
Microbial communities within the animal digestive tract often provide important functions for their hosts. The composition of eukaryotes’ gut bacteria can be shaped by host diet, vertical bacterial transmission, and physiological variation within the digestive tract. In several ant taxa, recent findings have demonstrated that nitrogen provisioning by symbiotic bacteria makes up for deficiencies in herbivorous diets. Using 16S rRNA amplicon sequencing and quantitative PCR, this study examined bacterial communities at a fine scale across one such animal group, the turtle ant genus
Cephalotes
. We analyzed the composition and colonization density across four portions of the digestive tract to understand how bacterial diversity is structured across gut compartments, potentially allowing for specific metabolic functions of benefit to the host. In addition, we aimed to understand if caste differentiation or host relatedness influences the gut bacterial communities of
Cephalotes
ants. Microbial communities were found to vary strongly across
Cephalotes
gut compartments in ways that transcend both caste and host phylogeny. Despite this, caste and host phylogeny still have detectable effects. We demonstrated microbial community divergence across gut compartments, possibly due to the various function of each gut compartment for digestion.
IMPORTANCE
Gut compartments play an important role in structuring the microbial community within individual ants. The gut chambers of the turtle ant digestive tract differ remarkably in symbiont abundance and diversity. Furthermore, caste type explains some variation in the microbiome composition. Finally, the evolutionary history of the
Cephalotes
species structures the microbiome in our study, which elucidates a trend in which related ants maintain related microbiomes, conceivably owing to cospeciation. Amazingly, gut compartment-specific signatures of microbial diversity, relative abundance, composition, and abundance have been conserved over
Cephalotes
evolutionary history, signifying that this symbiosis has been largely stable for over 50 million years.
Metrics
Details
- Title
- Localization of Bacterial Communities within Gut Compartments across Cephalotes Turtle Ants
- Creators
- Peter J. Flynn - University of ChicagoCatherine L. D’Amelio - Drexel UniversityJon G. Sanders - Cornell UniversityJacob A. Russell - Drexel UniversityCorrie S. Moreau - Cornell University
- Contributors
- Shuang-Jiang Liu (Editor)
- Publication Details
- Applied and environmental microbiology, v 87(8)
- Publisher
- American Society for Microbiology (ASM)
- Resource Type
- Journal article
- Language
- English
- Academic Unit
- Biology
- Web of Science ID
- WOS:000635350600012
- Scopus ID
- 2-s2.0-85104701069
- Other Identifier
- 991019168806504721
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InCites Highlights
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- Collaboration types
- Domestic collaboration
- Web of Science research areas
- Biotechnology & Applied Microbiology
- Microbiology