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Science 6 January 2006:
Vol. 311. no. 5757, pp. 81 - 83
DOI: 10.1126/science.1119744
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Reports

Coevolved Crypts and Exocrine Glands Support Mutualistic Bacteria in Fungus-Growing Ants

Cameron R. Currie,1,2,3* Michael Poulsen,1,4 John Mendenhall,5 Jacobus J. Boomsma,4 Johan Billen6

Attine ants engage in a quadripartite symbiosis with fungi they cultivate for food, specialized garden parasites, and parasite-inhibiting bacteria. Molecular phylogenetic evidence supports an ancient host-pathogen association between the ant-cultivar mutualism and the garden parasite. Here we show that ants rear the antibiotic-producing bacteria in elaborate cuticular crypts, supported by unique exocrine glands, and that these structures have been highly modified across the ants' evolutionary history. This specialized structural evolution, together with the absence of these bacteria and modifications in other ant genera that do not grow fungus, indicate that the bacteria have an ancient and coevolved association with the ants, their fungal cultivar, and the garden parasite.

1 Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin at Madison, Madison, WI 53706, USA.
2 Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Kansas, Lawrence, KS 66045, USA.
3 Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute, Apartado Box 2072, Balboa, Ancon, Republic of Panama.
4 Department of Population Biology, Institute of Biology, University of Copenhagen, DK-2100 Copenhagen, Denmark.
5 Institute for Cellular and Molecular Biology, University of Texas at Austin, TX 78712, USA.
6 Zoological Institute, Catholic University of Leuven, B-3000 Leuven, Belgium.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail: currie{at}bact.wisc.edu

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