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Fungus-growing Allomerus ants are associated with antibiotic-producing actinobacteria

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Abstract

Fungus-growing attine ants use natural-product antibiotics produced by mutualist actinobacteria as ‘weedkillers’ in their fungal gardens. Here we report for the first time that fungus-growing Allomerus ants, which lie outside the tribe Attini, are associated with antifungal-producing actinobacteria, which offer them protection against non-cultivar fungi isolated from their ant-plants.

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Acknowledgments

We acknowledge financial support from the University of East Anglia (UEA) and the Medical Research Council (grant number G0801721). MIH also acknowledges support from a Research Councils UK Fellowship, DWY received support from the Yunnan provincial government (20080A001) and Chinese Academy of Sciences (0902281081) and JO received support from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche (ANR-06-JCJC-01909-01) and a fellowship from the Fondation pour la Recherche sur la Biodiversité (AAP-IN-2009-050). We thank the Hutchings group members for helpful discussions concerning this manuscript and Paul Thomas in the Henry Wellcome Imaging Laboratory at UEA for assistance with light microscopy.

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Author notes

  1. Mario X. Ruiz-Gonzalez

    Present address: Department of Abiotic Stress, Group of Integrative and Systems Biology, Instituto de Biología Molecular y Celular de Plantas (CSIC-Universidad Politécnica de Valencia), Valencia, Spain

  2. Jérôme Orivel

    Present address: CNRS, UMR Ecologie des Forêts de Guyane, Campus Agronomique, BP 316, 97379, Kourou Cedex, France

Authors and Affiliations

  1. School of Biological Sciences, University of East Anglia, Norwich Research Park, Norwich, NR4 7TJ, UK

    Ryan F. Seipke, Jörg Barke & Matthew I. Hutchings

  2. State Key Laboratory of Genetic Resources and Evolution, Ecology, Conservation and Environment Center (ECEC), Kunming Institute of Zoology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Kunming, Yunnan, 650223, China

    Douglas W. Yu

Authors
  1. Ryan F. Seipke
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  2. Jörg Barke
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  3. Mario X. Ruiz-Gonzalez
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  4. Jérôme Orivel
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  5. Douglas W. Yu
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  6. Matthew I. Hutchings
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Matthew I. Hutchings.

Additional information

Ryan F. Seipke and Jörg Barke contributed equally to this work.

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Seipke, R.F., Barke, J., Ruiz-Gonzalez, M.X. et al. Fungus-growing Allomerus ants are associated with antibiotic-producing actinobacteria. Antonie van Leeuwenhoek 101, 443–447 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10482-011-9621-y

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