Fungi as mutualistic partners in ant-plant interactions

Veronika E Mayer; Hermann Voglmayr; Rumsais Blatrix; Jérôme Orivel; Céline Leroy

doi:10.3389/ffunb.2023.1213997

Fungi as mutualistic partners in ant-plant interactions

Front Fungal Biol. 2023 Oct 2:4:1213997. doi: 10.3389/ffunb.2023.1213997. eCollection 2023.

Authors

Veronika E Mayer¹, Hermann Voglmayr², Rumsais Blatrix³, Jérôme Orivel⁴, Céline Leroy^{4

5}

Affiliations

¹ Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research - Division of Structural and Functional Botany, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria.
² Department of Botany and Biodiversity Research - Mycology Research Group, University of Vienna, Wien, Austria.
³ CEFE, University of Montpellier, CNRS, EPHE, IRD, Montpellier, France.
⁴ EcoFoG, AgroParisTech, CIRAD, CNRS, INRAE, Université des Antilles, Université de Guyane, Kourou, France.
⁵ AMAP, Université de Montpellier, CIRAD, CNRS, INRAE, IRD, Montpellier, France.

Abstract

Associations between fungi and ants living in mutualistic relationship with plants ("plant-ants") have been known for a long time. However, only in recent years has the mutualistic nature, frequency, and geographical extent of associations between tropical arboreal ants with fungi of the ascomycete order Chaetothyriales and Capnodiales (belonging to the so-called "Black Fungi") become clear. Two groups of arboreal ants displaying different nesting strategies are associated with ascomycete fungi: carton-building ants that construct nest walls and galleries on stems, branches or below leaves which are overgrown by fungal hyphae, and plant-ants that make their nests inside living plants (myrmecophytes) in plant provided cavities (domatia) where ants cultivate fungi in small delimited "patches". In this review we summarize the current knowledge about these unsuspected plant-ant-fungus interactions. The data suggest, that at least some of these ant-associated fungi seem to have coevolved with ants over a long period of time and have developed specific adaptations to this lifestyle.

Keywords: Capnodiales; Chaetothyriales; ants; evolutionary history; function; specificity; transmission.

Publication types

Review

Grants and funding

This work received financial support from the Austrian Science Fund FWF (P-31990-Bio) to VM, and from an “Investissement d’Avenir’’ grant managed by the Agence Nationale de la Recherche (CEBA, ref. ANR-10-LABX-25-01) to CL and JO. For his past research on ant–plant symbioses, R.B. received financial support from the French National Research Agency (ANR) (projects CoSy, IFORA and C3A) and from a Franco-Thai Mobility Programme (PHC SIAM, France).