Abstract
Maintaining symbiosis homeostasis is essential for mutualistic partners. Leaf-cutting ants evolved a long-term symbiotic mutualism with fungal cultivars for nourishment while using vertical asexual transmission across generations. Despite the ants’ efforts to suppress fungal sexual reproduction, scattered occurrences of cultivar basidiomes have been reported. Here, we review the literature for basidiome occurrences and associated climate data. We hypothesized that more basidiome events could be expected in scenarios with an increase in temperature and precipitation. Our field observations and climate data analyses indeed suggest that Acromyrmex coronatus colonies are prone to basidiome occurrences in warmer and wetter seasons. Even though our study partly depended on historical records, occurrences have increased, correlating with climate change. A nest architecture with low (or even the lack of) insulation might be the cause of this phenomenon. The nature of basidiome occurrences in the A. coronatus–fungus mutualism can be useful to elucidate how resilient mutualistic symbioses are in light of climate change scenarios.
Highlights
Aristóteles Góes-Neto, ElisandroFungiculture evolved in fungus-growing ants about 55–65 million years ago [1,2,3]
To establish the current panorama of basidiome occurrences in leaf-cutting ant–fungus mutualism, we reviewed field occurrences since Mueller (2002) [19], adding new reports scattered across the literature and in the Global Biodiversity Information Facility database (GBIF; Tables 1 and S1) [40,41]
We recorded several basidiome occurrences on active A. coronatus nests constructed in tree forks
Summary
Ants provide suitable environmental conditions to nurture their fungal partners [4,5,6,7]. The fungal partner of leaf-cutting ants is vertically transmitted as mycelium across generations carried inside the infrabuccal pocket of foundress queens [16,17,18]. Despite the long-term history of clonal transmission, singular field occurrences of basidiomes were reported in this mutualism [19], mostly on shallow nests (Tables 1 and S1) [20,21,22]. Basidiome formation was previously suggested to be regulated by environmental factors in this mutualism, such as temperature and humidity, in laboratory colonies of Acromyrmex crassispinus (Forel, 1909) [23], and nest ventilation for field colonies of the leaf-cutting ant Atta cephalotes (Linnaeus, 1758) [21].
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