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Mutualism with aggressive wood-degrading Flavodon ambrosius (Polyporales) facilitates niche expansion and communal social structure in Ambrosiophilus ambrosia beetles
- Source :
- Fungal Ecology. 23:86-96
- Publication Year :
- 2016
- Publisher :
- Elsevier BV, 2016.
-
Abstract
- Most wood-boring insects compete with wood decaying basidiomycetes for woody biomass. One clade of ambrosia beetles gained access to rotten wood – an abundant resource unsuitable to most wood-boring insects – by evolving a farming-like mutualism with a white rot polypore. Here we show the mutualist of Ambrosiodmus/Ambrosiophilus, the polypore Flavodon ambrosius, is superior in lignocellulolytic capacity compared to Ascomycota ambrosia fungi and other white rot Basidiomycota. This mutualism facilitated the evolution of large, long-lived, communal colonies with overlapping generations and egg-laying by pre-dispersal progeny females. F. ambrosius resembles other white rot Polyporales in that it causes significant weight loss in wood decay assays and strong polyphenol oxidase reactions, indicative of lignin-modifying enzymes. The symbiosis is asymmetrical: there are many species of Ambrosiodmus and Ambrosiophilus but all use a single known species of Flavodon, which determines the ecological strategy of the entire insect clade.
- Subjects :
- 0106 biological sciences
0301 basic medicine
media_common.quotation_subject
Ambrosia fungi
Plant Science
Insect
complex mixtures
010603 evolutionary biology
01 natural sciences
03 medical and health sciences
Symbiosis
Polypore
Botany
Polyporales
Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics
media_common
Ecology
biology
Ascomycota
Ecological Modeling
fungi
technology, industry, and agriculture
food and beverages
Basidiomycota
biology.organism_classification
030104 developmental biology
Mutualism (economic theory)
Subjects
Details
- ISSN :
- 17545048
- Volume :
- 23
- Database :
- OpenAIRE
- Journal :
- Fungal Ecology
- Accession number :
- edsair.doi...........d4682ff4724220a8572a61ce38c5aa6a