Community analysis of microbial sharing and specialization in a Costa Rican ant-plant-hemipteran symbiosis.

Ants have long been renowned for their intimate mutualisms with trophobionts and plants and more recently appreciated for their widespread and diverse interactions with microbes. An open question in symbiosis research is the extent to which environmental influence, including the exchange of microbes between interacting macroorganisms, affects the composition and function of symbiotic microbial communities. Here we approached this question by investigating symbiosis within symbiosis. Ant-plant-hemipteran symbioses are hallmarks of tropical ecosystems that produce persistent close contact among the macroorganism partners, which then have substantial opportunity to exchange symbiotic microbes. We used metabarcoding and quantitative PCR to examine community structure of both bacteria and fungi in a Neotropical ant-plant-scale-insect symbiosis. Both phloem-feeding scale insects and honeydew-feeding ants make use of microbial symbionts to subsist on phloem-derived diets of suboptimal nutritional quality. Among the insects examined here, Cephalotes ants and pseudococcid scale insects had the most specialized bacterial symbionts, whereas Azteca ants appeared to consume or associate with more fungi than bacteria, and coccid scale insects were associated with unusually diverse bacterial communities. Despite these differences, we also identified apparent sharing of microbes among the macro-partners. How microbial exchanges affect the consumer-resource interactions that shape the evolution of ant-plant-hemipteran symbioses is an exciting question that awaits further research.

Harnessing ant defence at fruits reduces bruchid seed predation in a symbiotic ant-plant mutualism.

In horizontally transmitted mutualisms, mutualists disperse separately and reassemble in each generation with partners genetically unrelated to those in the previous generation. Because of this, there should be no selection on either partner to enhance the other's reproductive output directly. In symbiotic ant-plant mutualisms, myrmecophytic plants host defensive ant colonies, and ants defend the plants from herbivores. Plants and ants disperse separately, and, although ant defence can indirectly increase plant reproduction by reducing folivory, it is unclear whether ants can also directly increase plant reproduction by defending seeds. The neotropical tree Cordia alliodora hosts colonies of Azteca pittieri ants. The trees produce domatia where ants nest at stem nodes and also at the node between the peduncle and the rachides of the infloresence. Unlike the stem domatia, these reproductive domatia senesce after the tree fruits each year. In this study, I show that the tree's resident ant colony moves into these ephemeral reproductive domatia, where they tend honeydew-producing scale insects and patrol the nearby developing fruits. The presence of ants significantly reduced pre-dispersal seed predation by Amblycerus bruchid beetles, thereby directly increasing plant reproductive output.

Chemical constituents from Cordia alliodora and C. colloccoca (Boraginaceae) and their biological activities.

Two new natural products, 5-O-[ß-D-apiofuranosyl-(1→6)-ß-d-glucopyranosyl]-1-isoindolinone (1) as well as N-(2E)-3-[(2S,3R)-2-(4-hydroxy-3-methoxyphenyl)-3-(hydroxymethyl)-7-methoxy-2,3-dihydro-1-benzofuran-5-yl]acryloylglycine (2), along with four known compounds (3-6), were isolated from the methanolic extract of Cordia alliodora root bark. Furthermore, the methanolic extract of Cordia colloccoca leaves, afforded the known flavonoids afzelin (7) and quercitrin (8). The isolated secondary metabolites were assayed for their antimicrobial activities against a panel of 6g positive and negative bacteria and three human pathogenic fungi. Moreover, their antiproliferative effect was also evaluated in vitro against the human non-small-cell bronchopulmonary carcinoma line NSCLC-N6, the epidermoid lung cancer cell line A549 as well as the normal human skin fibroblast cell line (AG01523).

Propagación in vitro de material seleccionado de Tabebuia rosea (Bertol) DC (Ocobo) y Cordia alliodora (Ruiz & Pav) Oken (Nogal Cafetero) / In vitro propagation of Tabebuia rosea (Bertol DC) (large spreading cedar) and Cordia alliodora (Ruiz & Pav) Oken (coffee-shading walnut)

El presente trabajo tuvo por objetivo multiplicar y mantener in vitro plantas de Tabebuia rosea y de Cordia alliodora, a partir de semillas de cinco árboles plus de la primera especie y uno de la segunda. A partir de este material se seleccionaron plantas núcleo (PN), Yemas apicales de las plantas núcleo obtenidas, fueron removidas y cultivadas bajo condiciones in vitro hasta producir 1480 plantas de las dos especies. El proceso de aclimatización del material vegetal se llevó a cabo bajo condiciones de invernadero, en cámaras húmedas ubicadas en la estación experimental "Bambusa" en Pacho, Cundinamarca. Para el manejo de la información, se diseñó una base de datos en el programa Access, Microsoft Office®, con el fin de monitorear y evaluar el comportamiento de cada uno de los individuos durante el desarrollo in vitro, por medio del cálculo de tasas de velocidad de multiplicación (TVM), tasa de pérdida (TP) y tasa de eficiencia del proceso (TE). Este material será entregado a Conif para el establecimiento de la primera plantación de origen in vitro, que será utilizada posteriormente para ensayos de propagación vegetativa, análisis de pruebas clonales y moleculares.

This work was aimed at multiplying and maintaining in vitro plants from seedlings from five Tabebuia rosea (large spreading cedar tree) from and one Cordia alliodora (walnut tree used for providing shade for coffee plantations). Apical leaf buds were excised from mother plants (MP) and cultured in vitro until 1480 plants had been produced from the two species. The hardening process was carried out in greenhouse conditions using humid flow-chambers at Geoambiente Ltda’s Bambusa experimental station in Pacho, Cundinamarca. A database was created using Microsoft Office Access software for handling information required for monitoring and evaluating each plant’s behaviour during the in vitro culture process by calculating the rates of multiplication (RM) and loss(RL). The plants so produced will be used by Conif for field trials and evaluation purposes. This material will then be multiplied by vegetative propagation and used for clone and molecular testing analysis.