Biodiversity and life history adaptations of army ant symbionts

在过去的几十年里，生物学家已经开始探索最后的生物边疆，从深海到热带雨林树冠。他们的探险揭示了由奇妙的生物组成的令人惊叹的多样化社区。尽管作出了这些努力，但这些基本上未经探索的生物多样性前沿今天仍然存在，尽管规模较小。一个例子是与热带行军蚁有关的节肢动物的缩影。这些蚂蚁共生体，或称蚁巢，通常高度专门化，生活在蚁群中，通常在其他地方找不到。最近的一项研究汇编了300多种与一种新热带区行军蚁（Eciton burchellii）有关的亲蚁物种。该宿主的嗜蚁动物群落由来自不同分类群的各种节肢动物组成，如螨、弹尾虫、千足虫、甲虫、无翅蝇、刺尾虫和黄蜂。虽然一些蚂蚁myrmecophiles已被描述分类，绝大多数仍然等待科学发现和正式的分类描述。更令人震惊的是，我们缺乏关于蚁的生命周期和基本生活史的知识。对蚁蝇的探索受到两个主要因素的阻碍。首先，蚁媒生物的多样性是巨大的，传统的阿尔法分类法无法及时处理这种多样性。其次，由于它们的大小，军队蚁群不能在实验室中保持很长一段时间，并且考虑到它们的游牧生活方式，很难在野外跟踪。这使得基本上不可能在其整个生命周期中跟踪焦点蚁。在这里，我建议使用国家的最先进的DNA条形码技术，以克服这些障碍，并有效地研究的生物多样性和一些生活史性状的行军蚁。这种方法将使我能够快速识别myrmecophiles的物种水平，量化其生物多样性，并准备有效的分类学描述的标本，由合作的分类学家。此外，DNA条形码将使我能够匹配给定的亲蚁物种的不同发育阶段，并重建它们的生命周期。该项目将在热带生物多样性方面开辟一个广阔的前沿，并可能揭示行军蚁共生体的生活史适应。

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.