Publication Date:
2009-12-08
Description:
Bacteria-mediated acquisition of atmospheric N2 serves as a critical source of nitrogen in terrestrial ecosystems. Here we reveal that symbiotic nitrogen fixation facilitates the cultivation of specialized fungal crops by leaf-cutter ants. By using acetylene reduction and stable isotope experiments, we demonstrated that N2 fixation occurred in the fungus gardens of eight leaf-cutter ant species and, further, that this fixed nitrogen was incorporated into ant biomass. Symbiotic N2-fixing bacteria were consistently isolated from the fungus gardens of 80 leaf-cutter ant colonies collected in Argentina, Costa Rica, and Panama. The discovery of N2 fixation within the leaf-cutter ant-microbe symbiosis reveals a previously unrecognized nitrogen source in neotropical ecosystems.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Notes: 〈/span〉Pinto-Tomas, Adrian A -- Anderson, Mark A -- Suen, Garret -- Stevenson, David M -- Chu, Fiona S T -- Cleland, W Wallace -- Weimer, Paul J -- Currie, Cameron R -- GM 18938/GM/NIGMS NIH HHS/ -- New York, N.Y. -- Science. 2009 Nov 20;326(5956):1120-3. doi: 10.1126/science.1173036.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Author address: 〈/span〉Department of Bacteriology, University of Wisconsin-Madison, 1550 Linden Drive, Madison, WI 53706, USA.〈br /〉〈span class="detail_caption"〉Record origin:〈/span〉 〈a href="http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed/19965433" target="_blank"〉PubMed〈/a〉
Keywords:
Acetylene/metabolism
;
Animals
;
Ants/metabolism/microbiology/*physiology
;
Argentina
;
Costa Rica
;
*Ecosystem
;
Fungi/growth & development/*physiology
;
Klebsiella/isolation & purification/*metabolism
;
Molecular Sequence Data
;
Nitrogen/analysis/metabolism
;
*Nitrogen Fixation
;
Oxidation-Reduction
;
Panama
;
Pantoea/isolation & purification/*metabolism
;
Phylogeny
;
Plant Leaves/chemistry
;
*Symbiosis
Print ISSN:
0036-8075
Electronic ISSN:
1095-9203
Topics:
Biology
,
Chemistry and Pharmacology
,
Computer Science
,
Medicine
,
Natural Sciences in General
,
Physics
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