title: Distinctive fungal communities in an obligate African ant-plant mutualism.
abstract: Three ant species nest obligately in the swollen-thorn domatia of the African ant-plantVachellia(Acacia)drepanolobium, a model system for the study of ant-defence mutualisms and species coexistence. Here we report on the characteristic fungal communities generated by these ant species in their domatia. First, we describe behavioural differences between the ant species when presented with a cultured fungal isolate in the laboratory. Second, we use DNA metabarcoding to show that each ant species has a distinctive fungal community in its domatia, and that these communities remain characteristic of the ant species over two Kenyan sampling locations separated by 190 km. Third, we find that DNA extracted from female alates ofTetraponera penzigiandCrematogaster nigricepscontained matches for most of the fungal metabarcodes from those ant species' domatia, respectively. Fungal hyphae and other debris are also visible in sections of these alates' infrabuccal pockets. Collectively, our results indicate that domatium fungal communities are associated with the ant species occupying the tree. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first record of such ant-specific fungal community-level differences on the same myrmecophytic host species. These differences may be shaped by ant behaviour in the domatia, and by ants vectoring fungi when they disperse to establish new colonies. The roles of the fungi with respect to the ants and their host plant remain to be determined.
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Christopher C M
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2675-1078
authors.initials: CC
authors.lastname: Baker
authors.affiliation: Mpala Research Centre, PO Box 555, Nanyuki 10400, Kenya.|Turkana Basin Institute, Stony Brook University, N 507 Social and Behavioural Sciences, Stony Brook, NY 11794, USA.
authors.forename: Dino J
authors.initials: DJ
authors.lastname: Martins
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA.
authors.forename: Julianne N
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0001-6110-1794
authors.initials: JN
authors.lastname: Pelaez
authors.affiliation: Department of Biology, KU Leuven, Naamsestraat 59 - Box 2466, 3000 Leuven, Belgium.
authors.forename: Johan P J
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-2392-7293
authors.initials: JP
authors.lastname: Billen
authors.affiliation: Department of Botany, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.|Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
authors.forename: Anne
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-1526-6739
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Pringle
authors.affiliation: Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, Toronto, Ontario, Canada M5S 3B2.
authors.forename: Megan E
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0002-9058-7137
authors.initials: ME
authors.lastname: Frederickson
authors.affiliation: Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138, USA npierce@oeb.harvard.edu.
authors.forename: Naomi E
authors.identifier: http://orcid.org/0000-0003-3366-1625
authors.initials: NE
authors.lastname: Pierce
mesh_terms: D000818:Animals; D001000:Ants; D058893:DNA Barcoding, Taxonomic; D005260:Female; D005658:Fungi; D007630:Kenya; D013559:Symbiosis
keywords: Tetraponera; Vachellia (Acacia) drepanolobium; fungi; insects; metabarcoding; species interactions