Biodiversity and life history adaptations of army ant symbionts

行军蚁共生体的生物多样性和生活史适应

基本信息

批准号：
226094024
负责人：
Dr. Christoph von Beeren, Ph.D.
金额：
--
依托单位：
Arbeitsgruppe Ecological Networks
依托单位国家：
德国
项目类别：
Research Fellowships
财政年份：
2012
资助国家：
德国
起止时间：
2011-12-31 至 2014-12-31
项目状态：
已结题

来源：
https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/226094024?language=en
关键词：
Biodiversity life history adaptations army

项目摘要

Over the last decades, biologists have begun to explore the last biological frontiers, from the deep sea to tropical rainforest canopies. Their expeditions have revealed astonishingly diverse communities composed of marvellous creatures. Despite these efforts, such frontiers of largely unexplored biodiversity still exist today, albeit on a smaller scale. One example is the microcosm of arthropods associated with tropical army ants. These ant symbionts, or myrmecophiles, are often highly specialized to live inside ant colonies and usually cannot be found elsewhere. A recent study compiled more than 300 myrmecophile species associated with a single species of Neotropical army ant (Eciton burchellii). The myrmecophile community of this host consists of various arthropods from different taxa such as mites, collembolans, millipedes, beetles, wingless flies, bristletails and wasps. While some army ant myrmecophiles have been described taxonomically, the vast majority still awaits scientific discovery and formal taxonomic description. Even more striking is our lack of knowledge regarding myrmecophile life cycles and basic life history. The exploration of myrmecophiles has been hampered by two main factors. First, myrmecophile biodiversity is immense, and traditional alpha taxonomy has not been able to process this diversity in a timely manner. Second, due to their size, army ant colonies cannot be kept in the laboratory for extended periods of time and, given their nomadic life style, are difficult to track in the field. This has made it essentially impossible to follow focal myrmecophiles through their entire life cycle. Here I propose to use state-of-the-art DNA barcoding techniques to overcome these impediments, and to efficiently study the biodiversity and some life history traits of army ant myrmecophiles. This approach will allow me to rapidly identify myrmecophiles to the species level, quantify their biodiversity, and prepare specimens for efficient taxonomic description by collaborating taxonomists. Furthermore, DNA barcoding will allow me to match different developmental stages of a given myrmecophile species, and to reconstruct their life cycles. This project will open up a large frontier in tropical biodiversity and will likely reveal life history adaptations in army ant symbionts.

在过去的几十年里，生物学家开始探索最后的生物前沿，从深海到热带雨林树冠。他们的探险揭示了由奇妙生物组成的极其多样化的群落。尽管做出了这些努力，这种基本上未开发的生物多样性前沿仍然存在，尽管规模较小。一个例子是与热带行军蚁相关的节肢动物的缩影。这些蚂蚁共生体或嗜蚁菌通常高度专业化，生活在蚁群内，通常在其他地方找不到。最近的一项研究收集了 300 多个与单一新热带行军蚁 (Eciton burchellii) 物种相关的嗜蚁菌物种。该宿主的嗜蚁群落由来自不同类群的各种节肢动物组成，如螨、跳虫、千足虫、甲虫、无翅蝇、鬃尾虫和黄蜂。虽然一些军蚁嗜食蚁已经在分类学上得到描述，但绝大多数仍等待科学发现和正式的分类学描述。更引人注目的是我们缺乏对嗜嗜菌生命周期和基本生活史的了解。对嗜粘菌的探索受到两个主要因素的阻碍。首先，嗜粘菌生物多样性巨大，传统的阿尔法分类学无法及时处理这种多样性。其次，由于军蚁群的体型较大，无法在实验室中长时间保存，而且由于它们的游牧生活方式，很难在野外进行追踪。这使得追踪嗜粘菌的整个生命周期基本上是不可能的。在这里，我建议使用最先进的DNA条形码技术来克服这些障碍，并有效地研究军蚁嗜蚁者的生物多样性和一些生活史特征。这种方法将使我能够在物种水平上快速识别嗜粘菌，量化其生物多样性，并准备标本以便与分类学家合作进行有效的分类描述。此外，DNA 条形码将使我能够匹配特定嗜嗜菌物种的不同发育阶段，并重建它们的生命周期。该项目将开辟热带生物多样性的广阔前沿，并可能揭示行军蚁共生体的生活史适应。