Metabolism And The Rise Of Fungus Cultivation By Ants

Simple item page
dc.contributor.utaustinauthorMueller, Ulrich G.en
dc.creatorShik, Jonathan Z.en
dc.creatorSantos, Juan C.en
dc.creatorSeal, Jon N.en
dc.creatorKay, Adamen
dc.creatorMueller, Ulrich G.en
dc.creatorKaspari, Michaelen
dc.date.accessioned2015-09-09T15:49:39Zen
dc.date.available2015-09-09T15:49:39Zen
dc.date.issued2014-09en
dc.description.abstractMost ant colonies are comprised of workers that cooperate to harvest resources and feed developing larvae. Around 50 million years ago (MYA), ants of the attine lineage adopted an alternative strategy, harvesting resources used as compost to produce fungal gardens. While fungus cultivation is considered a major breakthrough in ant evolution, the associated ecological consequences remain poorly understood. Here, we compare the energetics of attine colony-farms and ancestral hunter-gatherer colonies using metabolic scaling principles within a phylogenetic context. We find two major energetic transitions. First, the earliest lower-attine farmers transitioned to lower mass-specific metabolic rates while shifting significant fractions of biomass from ant tissue to fungus gardens. Second, a transition 20 MYA to specialized cultivars in the higher-attine clade was associated with increased colony metabolism (without changes in garden fungal content) and with metabolic scaling nearly identical to hypometry observed in hunter-gatherer ants, although only the hunter-gatherer slope was distinguishable from isometry. Based on these evolutionary transitions, we propose that shifting living-tissue storage from ants to fungal mutualists provided energetic storage advantages contributing to attine diversification and outline critical assumptions that, when tested, will help link metabolism, farming efficiency, and colony fitness.en
dc.description.departmentIntegrative Biologyen
dc.description.sponsorshipen
dc.identifier.citationJonathan Z. Shik, Juan C. Santos, Jon N. Seal, Adam Kay, Ulrich G. Mueller, Michael Kaspari. Metabolism And The Rise Of Fungus Cultivation By Ants. The American Naturalist, Vol. 184, No. 3 (September 2014), pp. 364-373. DOI: 10.1086/677296en
dc.identifier.doi10.1086/677296en
dc.identifier.issn0003-0147en
dc.identifier.urihttp://hdl.handle.net/2152/31023en
dc.identifier.urlen
dc.language.isoEnglishen
dc.relation.ispartofserialAmerican Naturalisten
dc.rightsAdministrative deposit of works to Texas ScholarWorks: This works author(s) is or was a University faculty member, student or staff member; this article is already available through open access or the publisher allows a PDF version of the article to be freely posted online. The library makes the deposit as a matter of fair use (for scholarly, educational, and research purposes), and to preserve the work and further secure public access to the works of the University.en
dc.rights.holderen
dc.subjectcolony sizeen
dc.subjecttribe attinien
dc.subjecthunter-gathereren
dc.subjectmetabolic scalingen
dc.subjectevolutionary transitionen
dc.subjectleaf-cutting anten
dc.subjectmajor evolutionary transitionsen
dc.subjectflorida harvester anten
dc.subjectattine anten
dc.subjectindependent contrastsen
dc.subjectlife-historyen
dc.subjectformicidaeen
dc.subjecthymenopteraen
dc.subjectgardensen
dc.subjectworkersen
dc.subjectecologyen
dc.subjectevolutionary biologyen
dc.titleMetabolism And The Rise Of Fungus Cultivation By Antsen
dc.typeArticleen

Access full-text files

Original bundle

Now showing 1 - 1 of 1
Thumbnail Image
Name:
MetabolismRiseFungusCultivation.pdf
Size:
756.88 KB
Format:
Adobe Portable Document Format
Download

Collections

UT Faculty/Researcher Works