Bacterial communities of multiple ant species plus their fungal gardens. ant metagenome

Bacterial communities collected from multiple ant species plus their fungal gardens. To better understand the range and composition of bacterial communities between different attine species, we analyzed 3 species of higher attines (including 1 species from a prior study), 5 species of lower attines, and included 2 species of non-attines from a prior study. From these 10 ant species, have 4 species collected from Panama (4 from riverbank habitat and 1 species collected from meadow habitat) and 6 species collected from Texas. We compared bacterial communities from these attines from field collected colonies of worker ants (n=30) and their fungal gardens (n=24). Additionally, we compared field vs lab ant collections. Natural ant colonies were collected in April 2010 from Panama. Colonies for three ant species Trachymyrmex zeteki (n=2 nests), Cyphomyrmex muelleri (n=1), and Cyphomyrmex longiscapus (n=1) were collected for 454- pyrosequencing analyses of bacterial community composition. Three whole ant workers and small pieces of fungal gardens were placed directly into a 1 mL vial containing 100% ethanol using flame sterilized forceps and kept in a -20 freezer until brought back to the University of Texas lab where they were stored in a -80 freezer. A part of the colony including the queen, workers, and fungal garden were taken from the field and transferred back to the University of Texas where they were kept alive in plastic chambers and fed polenta. An additional Cyphomyrmex muelleri colony with fungal and workers collected from the lab colony only was also sampled as a control. Eight months after living in the lab, fungal and worker samples were collected into ethanol vials and placed into the - 80°C freezer.

本数据集涵盖从多种蚂蚁物种及其真菌种植园中采集的细菌群落。为深入明晰不同切叶蚁（attine）类群间细菌群落的分布范围与组成特征，本研究分析了3种高级切叶蚁（其中1种来自既往研究）、5种低级切叶蚁，并纳入2种来自既往研究的非切叶蚁类群。上述10种蚂蚁中，4种采自巴拿马（含4份河岸生境样本与1份草甸生境样本），6种采自美国得克萨斯州。我们对比了野外采集的工蚁蚁群（样本量n=30）及其真菌种植园（样本量n=24）的细菌群落，同时还比较了野外与实验室来源的蚂蚁样本。天然蚁群于2010年4月采自巴拿马。针对3种蚂蚁——Trachymyrmex zeteki（n=2巢）、Cyphomyrmex muelleri（n=1巢）及Cyphomyrmex longiscapus（n=1巢），我们开展了细菌群落组成的454焦磷酸测序（454-pyrosequencing）分析。使用经火焰灭菌的镊子将3只完整工蚁与小块真菌种植园组织直接置入装有100%乙醇的1mL样本瓶中，置于-20℃冰箱保存，运回得克萨斯大学实验室后转存至-80℃冰箱。将包含蚁后、工蚁及真菌种植园的蚁群片段从野外采集并转运至得克萨斯大学，在塑料饲养箱中活体饲养并以玉米粥投喂。另有1份仅采自实验室饲养的Cyphomyrmex muelleri蚁群的真菌与工蚁样本，作为对照样本。在实验室饲养8个月后，采集真菌与工蚁样本置入乙醇样本瓶，随后置于-80℃冰箱保存。