BioProject

To better understand the range and composition of bacterial communities between different attine species, we analyzed 3 species of higher attines (including 1 species from a prior study), 5 species of lower attines, and included 2 species of non-attines from a prior study. From these 10 ant species, have 4 species collected from Panama (4 from riverbank habitat and 1 species collected from meadow habitat) and 6 species collected from Texas. We compared bacterial communities from these attines from field collected colonies of worker ants (n=30) and their fungal gardens (n=24).

Additionally, we compared field vs lab ant collections. Natural ant colonies were collected in April 2010 from Panama. Colonies for three ant species Trachymyrmex zeteki (n=2 nests), Cyphomyrmex muelleri (n=1), and Cyphomyrmex longiscapus (n=1) were collected for 454- pyrosequencing analyses of bacterial community composition. Three whole ant workers and small pieces of fungal gardens were placed directly into a 1 mL vial containing 100% ethanol using flame sterilized forceps and kept in a -20 freezer until brought back to the University of Texas lab where they were stored in a -80 freezer. A part of the colony including the queen, workers, and fungal garden were taken from the field and transferred back to the University of Texas where they were kept alive in plastic chambers and fed polenta. An additional Cyphomyrmex muelleri colony with fungal and workers collected from the lab colony only was also sampled as a control. Eight months after living in the lab, fungal and worker samples were collected into ethanol vials and placed into the - 80°C freezer. Less...