Centre for Social Evolution, Section for Ecology and Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Universitetsparken 15, 2100 Copenhagen East, Denmark.
Mol Ecol. 2012 May;21(9):2054-7. doi: 10.1111/j.1365-294X.2012.05510.x.
Ants are quite possibly the most successful insects on Earth, with an estimated 10,000 species worldwide, making up at least a third of the global insect biomass, and comprising several times the biomass of all land vertebrates combined. Ant species have diverse trophic habits, including herbivory, hunting/gathering, scavenging and predation and are distributed in diverse habitats, performing a variety of important ecosystem functions. Often they exert these functions while engaging in symbiotic associations with other insects, plants or microbes; however, remarkably little work has focused on the potential contribution of the ants' gut symbionts. This issue of Molecular Ecology contains a study by Anderson et al. (2012), who take a comparative approach to explore the link between trophic levels and ant microbiomes, specifically, to address three main questions: (i) Do closely related herbivorous ants share similar bacterial communities? (ii) Do species of predatory ants share similar bacterial communities? (iii) Do distantly related herbivorous ants tend to share similar bacterial communities? By doing so, the authors demonstrate that ants with similar trophic habits appear to have relatively conserved gut microbiomes, suggesting symbiont functions that directly relate to dietary preference of the ant host. These findings suggest an ecological role of gut symbionts in ants, for example, in metabolism and/or protection, and the comparative approach taken supports a model of co-evolution between ant species and specific core symbiont microbiomes. This study, thereby, highlights the omnipresence and importance of gut symbioses-also in the Hymenoptera-and suggests that these hitherto overlooked microbes likely have contributed to the ecological success of the ants.
蚂蚁可能是地球上最成功的昆虫，全球估计有 1 万种，占全球昆虫生物量的至少三分之一，其生物量是所有陆地脊椎动物的数倍。蚂蚁物种具有多种营养习性，包括食草、猎食/采集、食腐和捕食，分布在多种生境中，发挥着各种重要的生态系统功能。它们经常在与其他昆虫、植物或微生物共生的同时发挥这些功能；然而，令人惊讶的是，很少有工作关注蚂蚁肠道共生体的潜在贡献。本期《分子生态学》包含了 Anderson 等人的研究（2012 年），他们采用比较方法探索了营养水平与蚂蚁微生物组之间的联系，具体来说，解决了三个主要问题：(i) 亲缘关系密切的食草蚂蚁是否具有相似的细菌群落？(ii) 捕食性蚂蚁物种是否具有相似的细菌群落？(iii) 亲缘关系较远的食草蚂蚁是否倾向于具有相似的细菌群落？通过这样做，作者表明具有相似营养习性的蚂蚁似乎具有相对保守的肠道微生物组，这表明共生体的功能与蚂蚁宿主的饮食偏好直接相关。这些发现表明肠道共生体在蚂蚁中的生态作用，例如在代谢和/或保护方面，所采用的比较方法支持了蚂蚁物种与特定核心共生微生物组之间的共同进化模式。因此，这项研究强调了肠道共生体的普遍存在和重要性——在膜翅目昆虫中也是如此，并表明这些迄今为止被忽视的微生物可能为蚂蚁的生态成功做出了贡献。
