the dynamics of plant cell-wall polysaccharide decomposition in leaf-cutting ant fungus gardens植物细胞壁多糖的动力学分解在切叶蚁真菌花园.pdfVIP

The Dynamics of Plant Cell-Wall Polysaccharide Decomposition in Leaf-Cutting Ant Fungus Gardens 1*.¤a 2. 3 1¤b Isabel E. Moller , Henrik H. De Fine Licht , Jesper Harholt , William G. T. Willats , Jacobus J. Boomsma2 1 Copenhagen Biocenter, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 2 Centre for Social Evolution, Department of Biology, University of Copenhagen, Copenhagen, Denmark, 3 VKR Research Centre Pro-Active Plants, Section for Plant Glycobiology, Department of Plant Biology and Biochemistry, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Copenhagen, Frederiksberg, Denmark Abstract The degradation of live plant biomass in fungus gardens of leaf-cutting ants is poorly characterised but fundamental for understanding the mutual advantages and efficiency of this obligate nutritional symbiosis. Controversies about the extent to which the garden-symbiont Leucocoprinus gongylophorus degrades cellulose have hampered our understanding of the selection forces that induced large scale herbivory and of the ensuing ecological footprint of these ants. Here we use a recently established technique, based on polysaccharide microarrays probed with antibodies and carbohydrate binding modules, to map the occurrence of cell wall polymers in consecutive sections of the fungus garden of the leaf-cutting ant Acromyrmex echinatior. We show that pectin, xyloglucan and some xylan epitopes are degraded, whereas more highly substituted xylan and cellulose epitopes remain as residuals in the waste material that the ants remove from their fungus garden. These results demonstrate that biomass entering leaf-cutting ant fungus gardens is only partially utilized and explain