title: The interactions of ants with their biotic environment.
abstract: This special featureresults from the symposium 'Ants 2016: ant interactions with their biotic environments' held in Munich in May 2016 and deals with the interactions between ants and other insects, plants, microbes and fungi, studied at micro- and macroevolutionary levels with a wide range of approaches, from field ecology to next-generation sequencing, chemical ecology and molecular genetics. In this paper, we review key aspects of these biotic interactions to provide background information for the papers of this special featureAfter listing the major types of biotic interactions that ants engage in, we present a brief overview of ant/ant communication, ant/plant interactions, ant/fungus symbioses, and recent insights about ants and their endosymbionts. Using a large molecular clock-dated Formicidae phylogeny, we map the evolutionary origins of different ant clades' interactions with plants, fungi and hemiptera. Ants' biotic interactions provide ideal systems to address fundamental ecological and evolutionary questions about mutualism, coevolution, adaptation and animal communication.
authors.affiliation: Systematic Botany and Mycology, University of Munich (LMU), Menzinger Strasse 67, 80638 Munich, Germany guillaume.chomicki@gmail.com.
authors.forename: Guillaume
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-4547-6195
authors.initials: G
authors.lastname: Chomicki
authors.affiliation: Systematic Botany and Mycology, University of Munich (LMU), Menzinger Strasse 67, 80638 Munich, Germany.
authors.forename: Susanne S
authors.initials: SS
authors.lastname: Renner
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants; D000073930:Biological Coevolution; D005658:Fungi; D006430:Hemiptera; D010802:Phylogeny; D010944:Plants; D013559:Symbiosis
keywords: ants; bacteria; fungi; insects; interactions; plants