Abstract
Platypodinae ambrosia beetles depend on mutualistic fungi for food, and both partners cooperate in colonizing dead trees. The fungi are transported in specialized structures (mycangia), but the location of mycangia is unknown in many platypodine species. One species with elusive mycangia is Euplatypus parallelus, widespread in the Americas, and recently invasive worldwide. Drawing on knowledge about other ambrosia beetles, we predict that the mycangia may be either internal in the head, internal or external within the prothorax, or the symbiont is carried within the hindgut. We attempted detection using X-ray computed tomography, Fluorescence In Situ Hybridization and histology. For method validation and comparison we used Euplatypus compositus, a related species with pronotal mycangia. Despite routine isolation of the ambrosia fungi from both sexes, no consistent mycangia-like structures were found anywhere within E. parallelus. Both Euplatypus species yielded a diverse fungal community on different body parts, but the most consistent associate of both beetle species, and the most likely nutritional mutualist, is Raffaelea xyleborini. A notable discovery is that during dispersal in both species, females had their hindgut filled with a mass of tightly packed yeasts, mostly an unknown Starmera species. The function of this yeast cache is not known. Our results showed that both Euplatypus species are associated with the same fungus, but E. parallelus either does not have mycangia or we failed to locate them. This study adds to the growing evidence that Platypodinae beetles have coevolved with members of the genus Raffaelea and that they are promiscuous at the genus level.
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Acknowledgements
The authors thank Daniel Carrillo and Romina Gazis (UF/TREC) for assistance with fieldwork; Carlos Sendoya Corrales and Surendra Neupane for helping during collection. We thank Camila da Silva Reis, Carlos A. H. Flecthmann, and Quimi Vidaurre Montoya for collecting beetles in Brazil and for obtaining fungal isolates from E. parallelus. This study followed the Nagoya Protocol regulations under permit CGEN #A55DB57. We also thank Sawyer Adams, the staff of Molecular Pathology Core and of the Interdisciplinary Center for Biotechnology Research at the University of Florida for technical assistance. We are grateful to members of Forest Entomology Laboratory at UF for constructive comments on early versions of the manuscript.
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We thank the National Science Foundation (NSF) support to JH and MES, USDA Forest Service to JH, and USDA-NIFA (2019–05150) and NSF IOS-2241029 granted to NOK. We also thank the Institute of Food and Agricultural Sciences (IFAS) at the University of Florida and the USDA NIFA (Hatch 1001991, McIntire-Stennis 1011527) granted to MES.
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AR, AJJ, JH designed the study. JH, MES, and NOK funding and contributed resources for this work. AR, AJJ, RAJ, and YL carried out fieldwork. AR, BW, ELS, MK, MW, and RAJ carried out laboratory work. AR and AJJ organized and analyzed the data. AR, AJJ and JH wrote the first drafts of the manuscript. All authors revised and contributed to writing process of the manuscript.
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Rodrigues, A., Johnson, A.J., Joseph, R.A. et al. Fungal symbiont community and absence of detectable mycangia in invasive Euplatypus ambrosia beetles. Symbiosis 90, 305–319 (2023). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13199-023-00938-4
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13199-023-00938-4