Biodiversity and life history adaptations of army ant symbionts

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Over the last decades, biologists have begun to explore the last biological frontiers, from the deep sea to tropical rainforest canopies. Their expeditions have revealed astonishingly diverse communities composed of marvellous creatures. Despite these efforts, such frontiers of largely unexplored biodiversity still exist today, albeit on a smaller scale. One example is the microcosm of arthropods associated with tropical army ants. These ant symbionts, or myrmecophiles, are often highly specialized to live inside ant colonies and usually cannot be found elsewhere. A recent study compiled more than 300 myrmecophile species associated with a single species of Neotropical army ant (Eciton burchellii). The myrmecophile community of this host consists of various arthropods from different taxa such as mites, collembolans, millipedes, beetles, wingless flies, bristletails and wasps. While some army ant myrmecophiles have been described taxonomically, the vast majority still awaits scientific discovery and formal taxonomic description. Even more striking is our lack of knowledge regarding myrmecophile life cycles and basic life history. The exploration of myrmecophiles has been hampered by two main factors. First, myrmecophile biodiversity is immense, and traditional alpha taxonomy has not been able to process this diversity in a timely manner. Second, due to their size, army ant colonies cannot be kept in the laboratory for extended periods of time and, given their nomadic life style, are difficult to track in the field. This has made it essentially impossible to follow focal myrmecophiles through their entire life cycle. Here I propose to use state-of-the-art DNA barcoding techniques to overcome these impediments, and to efficiently study the biodiversity and some life history traits of army ant myrmecophiles. This approach will allow me to rapidly identify myrmecophiles to the species level, quantify their biodiversity, and prepare specimens for efficient taxonomic description by collaborating taxonomists. Furthermore, DNA barcoding will allow me to match different developmental stages of a given myrmecophile species, and to reconstruct their life cycles. This project will open up a large frontier in tropical biodiversity and will likely reveal life history adaptations in army ant symbionts.