Beauty and the yeast: A social insect cultivates a dense coat of symbiotic fungus on its body

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Presenting Author(s)

Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo

National Museum of Natural History-Smithsonian Institution
Washington, District of Columbia

Co-Author(s)

TS

Ted R. Schultz

Smithsonian Institution
Washington D.C., District of Columbia
AR

André Rodrigues

São Paulo State University
Rio Claro, São Paulo, Brazil
BS

Beatriz L. Sanchez

Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP)
Rio Claro, Sao Paulo, Brazil
CL

Caue Lopes

Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Brazil
YM

Yamid A. Mera

Universidad del Cauca
Popayán, Cauca, Colombia
HV

Heraldo L. Vasconcelos

Universidade Federal de Uberlândia
Minas Gerais, Minas Gerais, Brazil
JB

Johan Billen

University of Leuven
Leuven, Brabant Wallon, Belgium
CR

Christian Rabeling

Arizona State University
Tempe, AZ

Microbial symbionts can have positive, neutral, or negative effects on their hosts. Fungus-farming ants interact with basidiomycete fungi for food, ascomycete mycoparasitic fungal crop diseases, mycoparasite-inhibiting actinobacterial biocontrol agents, and black yeasts (Chaetothyriales) that feed on the actinobacterial mutualists. Here we show a novel symbiosis in which a fungus-farming ant nourishes and houses a black yeast in specialized cuticular structures. The black yeast forms a dense layer of interwoven filaments on the integuments of mature ants, but is absent on recently eclosed ants. Given the largely parasitic biology of other ant-associated black yeasts and given that its closest known relative is a human parasite, the association between this new ant species and its black-yeast symbiont likely originated as a parasitism and subsequently evolved into a mutualism