BRC-BIO: Establishing a new model system to study the relationship between gut microbiome and host niche specialization

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Most animals house a community of microorganisms in their guts. These microbes can allow the host animal to consume a particular diet or have a particular lifestyle, which the host would not be able to do otherwise. This research will examine the gut microbiome of charismatic insects called honeypot ants. Some of the honeypot ant colony members are highly specialized so that their guts can expand to be many times larger than a typical ant. They do this to store food when food is plentiful, so that they can feed the colony when food is limited. This research will answer questions about how the gut microbiome may help with food preservation over many months of storage, how it may supplement the diet of the ants with nutrients they may not get directly from their food, and how it may help to detoxify some of the food material that the ants consume. This research into the gut microbiomes of honeypot ants can inform, more generally, on how microorganisms can help their hosts to have specialized diets and lifestyles and can help us to understand how microbes can be used for long-term food storage. The honeypot ants will also be included in an Ant Visitor Center that will educate the public and get children excited about these animals and how scientists study them. Honeypot ants are an ideal system to study the relationship between gut microbiome and convergent evolution, having at least 16 independently evolved genera in three different subfamilies found in different locations around the world. This research provides the starting point into the microbiome of honeypot ants with one genus, Myrmecocystus, found in the semi-arid habitats of North America. The PI and their team will use field collections, community amplicon sequencing, proteomics, metabolomics, pH measurements and HPLC to characterize the microbial community and chemical environment in the guts of six species of Myrmecocystus. This work will be followed by experiments with microbial cultures and live ant colonies to determine whether microbiota detoxify plant defense compounds, provide supplemental nutrients, or prevent food spoilage. Data from these experiments, chemical analyses, amplicon sequencing, isolate genome sequencing and metatranscriptomics will be used to determine how food deprivation and plant toxins impact microbiomes.This award reflects NSF's statutory mission and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using the Foundation's intellectual merit and broader impacts review criteria.