Community analysis of microbial sharing and specialization in a Costa Rican ant-plant-hemipteran symbiosis.

ABSTRACT: Ants have long been renowned for their intimate mutualisms with trophobionts and plants and more recently appreciated for their widespread and diverse interactions with microbes. An open question in symbiosis research is the extent to which environmental influence, including the exchange of microbes between interacting macroorganisms, affects the composition and function of symbiotic microbial communities. Here we approached this question by investigating symbiosis within symbiosis. Ant-plant-hemipteran symbioses are hallmarks of tropical ecosystems that produce persistent close contact among the macroorganism partners, which then have substantial opportunity to exchange symbiotic microbes. We used metabarcoding and quantitative PCR to examine community structure of both bacteria and fungi

SUBMITTER: Pringle EG 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC5360929 | biostudies-literature | 2017 Mar

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature