The coevolution of fungus-ant agriculture
Fungus-farming ants cultivate multiple lineages of fungi for food, but, because fungal cultivar relationships are largely unresolved, the history of fungus-ant coevolution remains poorly known. We designed probes targeting >2000 gene regions to generate a dated evolutionary tree for 475 fungi and combined it with a similarly generated tree for 276 ants. We found that fungus-ant agriculture originated ~66 million years ago when the end-of-Cretaceous asteroid impact temporarily interrupted photosynthesis, causing global mass extinctions but favoring the proliferation of fungi. Subsequently, ~27 million years ago, one ancestral fungal cultivar population became domesticated, i.e., obligately mutualistic, when seasonally dry habitats expanded in South America, likely isolating the cultivar population from its free-living, wet forest-dwelling conspecifics. By revealing these and other major transitions in fungus-ant coevolution, our results clarify the historical processes that shaped a model system for nonhuman agriculture.
Authors
- Pepijn W. Kooij (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2619-0813)
- Ana Ješovnik (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4514-1478)
- Stephen A. Rehner (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6645-8143)
- Heraldo L. Vasconcelos (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-6969-7131)
- Else C. Vellinga (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-4171-0554)
- Michael W. Lloyd (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1021-8129)
- Brant C. Faircloth (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1943-0217)
- Vinson P. Doyle (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-2350-782X)
- Kare Liimatainen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5422-2384)
- Cameron R. Currie (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3104-3997)
- Christian Rabeling (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1292-0309)
- Ted R. Schultz (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6244-7233)
- Bryn T. M. Dentinger (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7965-4389)
- Caio A. Leal-Dutra (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-2059-5382)
- Quimi Vidaurre Montoya (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3285-5981)
- Matthew Kweskin (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-1885-0930)
- Scott E. Solomon (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-6376-5671)
- André Luis Rodrigues (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-4164-9362)
- Jeffrey Sosa‐Calvo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3995-7275)
- Nicole M. Gerardo (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-3185-6616)
- Maurício Bacci (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5619-1411)
- Tuula Niskanen (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-1479-5548)
- Hermógenes Fernández‐Marín (ORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0001-7200-384X)
Institutions
- Smithsonian Institution (US)
- University of Hohenheim (DE)
- Louisiana State University (US)
- University of Copenhagen (DK)
- Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (PA)
- Houston Museum of Natural Science (US)
- National Museum of Natural History (US)
- Emory University (US)
- University of Utah (US)
- Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew (GB)
- Beltsville Agricultural Research Center (US)
- Instituto de Investigaciones Científicas y Servicios de Alta Tecnología (PA)
- Arizona State University (US)
- Universidade Federal de Uberlândia (BR)
- Universidade Estadual Paulista (Unesp) (BR)
- University of California, Berkeley (US)
- McMaster University (CA)
Publication Details
- Journal
- Science
- Published
- 2024-10-03
- DOI
- https://doi.org/10.1126/science.adn7179
- Citations
- 33
- Primary Topic
- Insect and Arachnid Ecology and Behavior
- Type
- article
- Field-Weighted Citation Impact
- 18.16