Nutritional challenges of feeding a mutualist: Testing for a nutrient-toxin tradeoff in fungus-farming leafcutter ants.

ABSTRACT: The biochemical heterogeneity of food items often yields tradeoffs as each bite of food tends to contain some nutrients in surplus and others in deficit, as well as other less palatable or even toxic compounds. These multidimensional nutritional challenges are likely to be compounded when foraged foods are used to provision others (e.g., offspring or symbionts) with different physiological needs and tolerances. We explored these challenges in free-ranging colonies of leafcutter ants that navigate a diverse tropical forest to collect plant fragments they use to provision a co-evolved fungal cultivar. We tested the prediction that leafcutter farmers face provisioning tradeoffs between the nutritional quality and concentration of toxic tannins in foraged plant fragments. Chemical analyses of

SUBMITTER: Crumiere AJJ 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC9286363 | biostudies-literature | 2022 Jun

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature