COPHYLOGENETIC ANALYSES OF TRACHYMYRMEX ANT-FUNGAL SPECIFICITY: ‘ONE TO
ONE WITH SOME EXCEPTIONS’
Abstract
Over the past few decades, large-scale phylogenetic analyses of
fungus-gardening ants and their symbiotic fungi have depicted strong
concordance among major clades of ants and their symbiotic fungi, yet
within clades, fungus sharing is somewhat widespread among unrelated ant
lineages. These symbioses are thought to be explained by a diffuse
coevolution model within major clades. Understanding horizontal exchange
within clades has been limited by conventional genetic markers that lack
both interspecific and geographic variation. To examine whether reports
of horizontal exchange was indeed symbiont sharing or an issue of
employing relatively uninformative molecular markers, samples of
Trachymyrmex arizonensis and Trachymyrmex pomonae and
their fungi were collected from native populations in Arizona and
genotyped using conventional marker genes and genome-wide single
nucleotide polymorphisms (SNPs). Conventional markers of the fungal
symbionts generally exhibited cophylogenetic patterns that were
consistent with some symbiont sharing, but most fungal clades had low
support. SNP analysis, in contrast, indicated that each ant species
exhibited fidelity to its own fungal subclade with only one instance of
a colony growing a fungus that was otherwise associated with a different
ant species. This evidence supports a pattern of codivergence between
Trachymyrmex species and their fungi, and thus a diffuse
coevolutionary model may not accurately predict symbiont exchange. These
results suggest that fungal sharing across host species in these
symbioses may be less extensive than previously thought.