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Related Experiment Video

Updated: Aug 15, 2025

Microbiota of Attine Ants' Gardens: Visualizing a Microbial Landscape by Scanning Electron Microscopy

Microbiota of Attine Ants' Gardens: Visualizing a Microbial Landscape by Scanning Electron Microscopy

Published on: October 4, 2024

Untangling the complex interactions between turtle ants and their microbial partners.

Manuela O Ramalho¹, Corrie S Moreau^2,3

¹Department of Biology, West Chester University, 750 South Church Street, West Chester, PA, 19383, USA. mramalho@wcupa.edu.

Animal Microbiome

|January 3, 2023

Summary

This summary is machine-generated.

Turtle ants harbor a stable gut bacterial community. Species and geography shape this microbial community, with some bacteria co-evolving with their hosts over millions of years.

Keywords:

Host-associated bacteria Microbe Next-generation sequencing Symbiont

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Last Updated: Aug 15, 2025

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Preparing and Rearing Axenic Insects with Tissue Cultured Seedlings for Host-Gut Microbiota Interaction Studies of the Leaf Beetle

Published on: October 8, 2021

Area of Science:

Microbial ecology
Evolutionary biology
Entomology

Background:

Symbiotic interactions are crucial for understanding biodiversity and animal evolution.
Gut microbial communities significantly impact ant hosts, influencing diet and development.
Turtle ants (Cephalotes) have a 50-million-year-old symbiotic relationship with gut bacteria providing essential amino acids.

Purpose of the Study:

To investigate the microbial community structure and diversity in diverse turtle ant species.
To explore the influence of host phylogeny and biogeography on ant-associated microbes.
To identify patterns of co-evolution between turtle ants and their gut symbionts.

Main Methods:

Analysis of microbial community diversity using 16S and 18S rRNA amplicon sequencing.
Examination of over 75 turtle ant species across various geographic locations.
Phylogenetic analysis to assess host-microbe evolutionary relationships.

Main Results:

Turtle ant microbial community structure is influenced by host species and geographic region.
Significant correlations and co-occurrences were observed between bacterial and eukaryotic microbial communities.
The Burkholderiaceae lineage, part of the core bacterial community, exhibited strong codiversification patterns with the host.

Conclusions:

Turtle ants possess a diverse and evolutionarily stable core bacterial community.
The study highlights the complex interplay between host factors and microbial symbionts in shaping long-term evolutionary partnerships.
Further research is needed to understand the specific factors driving intertwined host-microbe evolutionary histories.