Nature Communications (Jul 2016)

Reciprocal genomic evolution in the ant–fungus agricultural symbiosis

  • Sanne Nygaard,
  • Haofu Hu,
  • Cai Li,
  • Morten Schiøtt,
  • Zhensheng Chen,
  • Zhikai Yang,
  • Qiaolin Xie,
  • Chunyu Ma,
  • Yuan Deng,
  • Rebecca B. Dikow,
  • Christian Rabeling,
  • David R. Nash,
  • William T. Wcislo,
  • Seán G. Brady,
  • Ted R. Schultz,
  • Guojie Zhang,
  • Jacobus J. Boomsma

DOI
https://doi.org/10.1038/ncomms12233
Journal volume & issue
Vol. 7, no. 1
pp. 1 – 9

Abstract

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Attine ants, including the leaf-cutting ants, cultivate fungi as their sole source of food. Here, Nygaard et al. use whole genome and transcriptome sequences from seven ant species and their fungal cultivars to reconstruct the reciprocal genetic changes underlying the evolution of the ant-fungus mutualism.