Biodiversity of endosymbiotic microbial communities and their role in food webs involving tropical arboreal ants

Project Information

ANT-GUT SYMBIONTS

Grant agreement ID: 515064

Project closed

Start date 1 November 2005

End date 31 October 2007

Funded under

• Human resources and Mobility in the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration "Structuring the European Research Area" under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006

Total cost No data

EU contribution € 150 237,00

Coordinated by

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - DELEGATION LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON
France

Objective

Nutritional mutualisms between tropical arboreal ants and bacteria symbiotic in their guts are of great ecological significance, because they form an essential part of the web of interactions that underpin the keystone role of ants as predators of arthropods in tropical forest canopies. With the exception of a few highly specialised examples, these important symbioses are virtually unstudied. Plant/ant/bacterial symbioses are convenient model systems for investigating numerous open questions about symbioses between insects and bacteria. Diets of tropical plant-associated ants, for example, are often highly variable among closely related species, and even, in a system to be examined in detail in this study, among colonies in a single population.

They thus offer greater scope for studying questions about functional diversity in insect/bacterial symbioses than do systems such as the interactions between Buchnera and aphids "all of which arephloem-sucking insects" that have provided the foundation from which the exploration of diversity can now begin. Study of plant/ant/bacterial symbioses may elucidate new roles for bacteria and new mechanisms for their effects.

The immediate goal of the study proposed here is to characterise patterns of bacterial diversity in ant guts at different levels, from intra-population variation in the African plant-ant Aphomomyrmex(mediated by the identity of yet another partner in the interaction, homopterans), to inter-population and inter specific variation in Aphomomyrmex and its sister taxon Petal omyrmex, and finally to a comparative study of bacterial symbionts of the pantropical lineage to which these ants belong, the formicine tribe Myrmelachistini. Patterns in this diversity will provide clues about the functioning and the evolutionary history of ant/bacterial symbioses. The long-term goal is to characterise functional diversity in these symbioses.

Fields of science

• natural sciences › biological sciences › microbiology › bacteriology
• natural sciences › biological sciences › ecology › ecosystems
• natural sciences › biological sciences › biological behavioural sciences › ethology › biological interactions
• natural sciences › biological sciences › zoology › entomology
• natural sciences › biological sciences › zoology › invertebrate zoology

Programme(s)

• FP6-MOBILITY - Human resources and Mobility in the specific programme for research, technological development and demonstration "Structuring the European Research Area" under the Sixth Framework Programme 2002-2006

Topic(s)

• MOBILITY-2.1 - Marie Curie Intra-European Fellowships (EIF)

Call for proposal

FP6-2002-MOBILITY-5
See other projects for this call

Funding Scheme

EIF - Marie Curie actions-Intra-European Fellowships

Coordinator

CENTRE NATIONAL DE LA RECHERCHE SCIENTIFIQUE - DELEGATION LANGUEDOC-ROUSSILLON

• EU contribution: No data
• Address: Route de Mende n°1919 ; MONTPELLIER ; France
• Total cost: No data