Collaborative Research SG: Symbiont interactions and heterosis in a hybrid social insect

台湾地下白蚁是一种群居害虫，也是一种主要的结构害虫。每年，与白蚁造成的损害和控制白蚁的努力相关的成本高达数十亿美元。为了消化木材，白蚁，如台湾地下白蚁，利用共生原生物种群落。这些原生生物对白蚁肠道环境高度专门化，不能离开寄主生存。在白蚁中，国王(父本)和王后(母本)都会把这些原生生物传给他们的后代。每种白蚁都有一个独特的原生物种群落。然而，关于这些社区是如何维护的，人们几乎一无所知。更重要的是，人们对不同原生生物物种对白蚁宿主适合性的影响知之甚少。台湾地下白蚁与亚洲地下白蚁交配产生的一种杂交白蚁的发现，提供了一个独特的研究机会。通过创造具有不同肠道原生生物的杂交白蚁，这项研究将极大地提高我们对白蚁肠道原生生物群落如何维持的理解。此外，这项研究创造的杂交白蚁将允许详细研究肠道原生生物如何影响白蚁的适合性。由于杂交白蚁是自然产生的，这项研究也将有助于制定知情的害虫控制策略。三所大学的研究生将作为项目的一部分接受培训。这项研究将描述和比较台湾地下白蚁、亚洲地下白蚁及其杂交后代的原生后肠群落。高通量测序将用于在多个时间点识别每个交配组合中的所有原生生物物种。这将揭示原教旨主义者之间共存和/或竞争排斥的模式。此外，这项研究还将剖析父母性别对共生体群落组成的任何潜在影响。这项研究还将调查白蚁生物学的哪些方面对观察到的杂交后代的活力贡献最大。为了做到这一点，这项工作将描绘嵌合殖民地的共生体群落。嵌合群体是指父母是杂交种，但共生群体来自单一寄主物种的群体。这些嵌合群体将在失去原生生物后，在群体成熟到足以拒绝入侵者之前，通过在杂交群体和同种群体之间交换初级繁殖来建立。这一裁决反映了NSF的法定使命，并通过使用基金会的智力优势和更广泛的影响审查标准进行评估，被认为值得支持。

The Formosan subterranean termite (Coptotermes formosanus) is a social insect and a major structural pest. Annually, the costs associated with the damage caused by this termite and efforts to control it are in the billions. In order to digest wood, termites such as the Formosan subterranean termite use a community of symbiotic protist species. The protists are highly specialized to the termite gut environment and cannot survive outside of their hosts. In termites, both the king (male parent) and the queen (female parent) pass these protists to their young. Each termite species harbors a unique community of protist species. However, virtually nothing is known about how these communities are maintained. More importantly, little is known about different protist species' impacts on the fitness of their termite hosts. The discovery of a hybrid termite resulting from the mating between the Formosan subterranean termite and the Asian subterranean termite (Coptotermes gestroi), which harbor different species of protists, provides a unique research opportunity. By creating hybrid termites, with different gut protists, this research will greatly improve our understanding of how the communities of protists in termite guts are maintained. Furthermore, the hybrid termites created by this research will allow for detailed studies of how gut protists influence termite fitness. Since hybrid termites occur naturally, this research will also help generate informed pest control strategies. Graduate students at three universities will be trained as part of the project.This study will characterize and compare the protist hindgut communities of the Formosan subterranean termite, the Asian subterranean termite and their hybrids. High throughput sequencing will be used to identify all protist species from each mating combination at multiple time points. This will reveal patterns of coexistence and/or competitive exclusion among the protists. Additionally, the research will dissect any potential effect of parental gender on symbiont community composition. The study will also investigate which aspects of termite biology contribute most to the observed vigor of the hybrids. To do so, the work will profile the symbiont communities of chimeric colonies. Chimeric colonies are those in which the parents are hybrids, but symbiont communities derive from a single host species. These chimeric colonies will be established by swapping primary reproductives between hybrid and conspecific colonies after they have lost their protists but before the colonies mature sufficiently to reject intruders.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.