Ramalho Manuela Oliveira, Bueno Odair Correa, Moreau Corrie Saux
Universidade Estadual Paulista "Júlio de Mesquita Filho" UNESP-Instituto de Biociências-Campus Rio Claro, Departamento de Biologia e Centro de Estudos de Insetos Sociais, Bela Vista, Rio Claro-SP, Brasil.
Field Museum of Natural History, Department of Science and Education, Integrative Research Center, Chicago, IL, United States of America.
PLoS One. 2017 Nov 22;12(11):e0187461. doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0187461. eCollection 2017.
Symbiotic relationships between hosts and bacteria are common in nature, and these may be responsible for the evolutionary success of various groups of animals. Among ants, these associations have been well studied in some genera of the Camponotini, but several questions remain regarding the generality of the previous findings across all the members of this ant tribe and if bacterial communities change across development in these hosts. This study is the first to characterize the bacterial community associated with a colony of the recently recognized genus Colobopsis and three colonies of Camponotus (two distinct species) and show how different the composition of the bacterial community is when compared across the different genera. Our data reveal that Colobopsis (species: Co. riehlii) and Camponotus (species: Ca. floridanus and Ca. planatus) have distinct microbiota, and we were able to verify that the identity of the species contributes more to the bacterial diversity. We also demonstrated that there were no significant differences between colonies of the same species (Camponotus planatus), and between stages of development from different colonies. We did find that some developmental stages have distinct bacteria, confirming that each stage of development could have a specific microbiota. Our results show species are one of the factors that shape the bacterial community in these Camponotini ants. Additional studies of the intra-colonial microbiome of other hosts and across development may reveal additional clues about the function and importance of bacteria in colony recognition, individual and colony health, and nutritional upgrading.
宿主与细菌之间的共生关系在自然界中很常见，这些关系可能是各类动物进化成功的原因。在蚂蚁中，这些关联在弓背蚁族的一些属中已有充分研究，但关于先前研究结果在该蚂蚁部落所有成员中的普遍性，以及这些宿主的细菌群落是否会随发育过程而变化，仍存在一些问题。本研究首次对与最近被认可的Colobopsis属的一个蚁群以及Camponotus属的三个蚁群（两个不同物种）相关的细菌群落进行了特征描述，并展示了不同属之间细菌群落组成的差异程度。我们的数据表明，Colobopsis（物种：Co. riehlii）和Camponotus（物种：Ca. floridanus和Ca. planatus）具有不同的微生物群，并且我们能够证实物种身份对细菌多样性的贡献更大。我们还证明，同一物种（扁平弓背蚁）的不同蚁群之间以及不同蚁群的发育阶段之间没有显著差异。我们确实发现一些发育阶段具有独特的细菌，这证实了每个发育阶段可能都有特定的微生物群。我们的结果表明，物种是塑造这些弓背蚁族蚂蚁细菌群落的因素之一。对其他宿主的蚁群内微生物组以及整个发育过程的进一步研究，可能会揭示关于细菌在蚁群识别、个体和蚁群健康以及营养提升方面的功能和重要性的更多线索。
