Right under your nose: How olfactory cues influence Cyphomyrmex costatus' recognition and preference of fungal symbionts

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2022-03

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Abstract

For at least 55 million years, fungus-growing ants (tribe: Attini) have maintained an intimate mutualism with their co-evolved fungal cultivar (Branstetter et al., 2017). The farmer ants provide their fungus gardens with resources for cultivation, and in turn, the fungus serves as an obligate food source and a place to raise young. Fungus-growing ant species are exclusive to their cultivar strain despite others being readily available. We examine the precision of Cyphomyrmex costatus' ability to differentiate between closely related fungi, including strains that are associated with another Cyphomyrmex species, C. muelleri. We hypothesize that if given the choice, Cyphomyrmex ants will show preference for fungal strains that are most genetically similar to their original garden. This ability to differentiate gardens is most likely driven by the ant's ability to detect chemical differences between strains; however, the chemistry of these gardens remains unknown. We have been actively isolating cultivar from our laboratory colonies (39 C. costatus and 8 C. muelleri) onto PDA-Cl agar plates. We performed DNA extractions on isolated cultivar and constructed a preliminary phylogeny (species-relatedness tree) utilizing previously published DNA sequences in addition to our novel extractions. Furthermore, we use behavioral assays to test our hypothesis that Cyphomyrmex ants "prefer" gardens that are most closely related to their native cultivar when given a choice between two fungal isolates. These behavioral and genetic studies will inform future questions about the importance of certain chemical cues in ant decision-making, and if there is a genetic basis for chemical volatiles associated with the mutualistic fungi.

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Animal and Insect Sciences (The Ohio State University Denman Undergraduate Research Forum)

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chemical ecology, behavioral ecology, evolutionary ecology, entomology

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