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Specificity in Chemical Profiles of Workers, Brood and Mutualistic Fungi in Atta, Acromyrmex, and Sericomyrmex Fungus-growing Ants

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Abstract

Neotropical attine ants live in obligatory symbiosis with a fungus that they grow for food on a substrate of primarily plant material harvested by workers. Nestmate recognition is likely based on chemical cues as in most other social insects, but recent studies have indicated that both the ants and their mutualistic fungi may contribute to the recognition templates. To investigate the within-colony variation in chemical profiles, we extracted and identified compounds from the cuticle of workers, the postpharyngeal gland of workers, ant pupae and larvae, and the fungal symbiont of three species of higher attine ants: Atta colombica, Acromyrmex echinatior, and Sericomyrmex amabilis. The relative proportions of identified compounds were compared and represented 11 classes: n-alkanes, alkenes, branched methylalkanes, branched dimethylalkanes, trimethylalkanes, branched alkenes, aldehydes, alcohols, acetates, acids, and esters. The chemical profiles in all three species are likely to be sufficiently different to allow discrimination at the species and colony level and sufficiently similar within colonies to generate a relatively constant colony-specific chemical gestalt. The relative likelihood of individual compounds being derived from the ants, the ant brood, or the fungal symbiont are discussed. We hypothesize that hydrocarbons are particularly important as recognition cues because they appear to simultaneously allow the assessment of developmental stages and the identification of symbiont, colony, and species.

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Acknowledgements

We thank the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) for providing logistic help and facilities to work in Gamboa and the Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente y el Mar (ANAM) for permission to sample ant colonies in Panama and export them to Denmark. Fieldwork was supported by grants from the Carlsberg Foundation and the Danish Natural Science Research Council to JJB. All experiments performed in this manuscript comply with current Danish and USA law.

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  1. Freddie-Jeanne Richard

    Present address: Department of Entomology, North Carolina State University, 1566A Gardner Hall, MC 7613, Raleigh, NC, 27695, USA

  2. Michael Poulsen

    Present address: Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 4325 Microbial Sciences building 1550 Linden Dr., Madison, WI, 53706, USA

Authors and Affiliations

  1. Chemical Ecology group, Lennard Jones Laboratories, Keele University, Staffordshire, ST5 5BG, England

    Freddie-Jeanne Richard, Falko Drijfhout & Graeme Jones

  2. Department of Population Biology, Institute of Biology, University of Copenhagen, 2100, Copenhagen, Denmark

    Michael Poulsen & Jacobus J. Boomsma

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  1. Freddie-Jeanne Richard
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  2. Michael Poulsen
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  5. Jacobus J. Boomsma
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Correspondence to Freddie-Jeanne Richard.

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Richard, FJ., Poulsen, M., Drijfhout, F. et al. Specificity in Chemical Profiles of Workers, Brood and Mutualistic Fungi in Atta, Acromyrmex, and Sericomyrmex Fungus-growing Ants. J Chem Ecol 33, 2281–2292 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-007-9385-z

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10886-007-9385-z

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