Ambrosia beetles grow gardens of fungi that produce nutritious spores to feed the beetles and their larvae. In exchange for these spores, the beetle carries the fungus from tree to tree, penetrating the protective bark and depositing the fungus in fresh dead wood. But how do the beetles pick a nutritious fungus from the myriad…
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Dirt bugs are back!
I made this fun little movie as a grad student more than half-a-decade ago. I was just informed that the film will be featured on the Global Soil Diversity web page, which is an international effort to help researchers in soil sciences better communicate their findings to the public and policy makers. I hope it…
A symbiont of a different color
Beautiful surprises abound as we awaken many of our cryo-preserved ambrosia isolates collected from all corners of the globe for formal description. In our hast to collect, sequence and preserve isolates during hurried excursions, we don’t often see the ultimate morphotypes in their full glory. Here are two equally beautiful creatures, Dinoplatypus flectus from Tam…
WTF, SPB?
How did this happen? Southern pine beetles have two entirely unrelated mycangial symbionts, Ceratocystiopsis ranaculosus (Ascomycota) and Entomocorticium sp A (Basidiomycota). The picture on right shows primary isolation plates and subcultures from the mycangia 6 individuals taken from one loblolly log. The top half had mycangia full of only the E. sp A, and the…
Multiple evolutionary origins lead to diversity in the metabolic profiles of ambrosia fungi
One of the most amazing things abut ambrosia symbioses is that they have independently evolved de novo over and over again in both beetles and fungi. Huang et al. used carbon substrate phenotyping arrays and variation partitioning to analytically separate the effects of evolutionary history from transition to ambrosial life style on the kinds of carbon…
Invaders bring decay!
Here in Florida, we’ve been seeing a lot of this lately: gorgeous spalting in hardwood logs caused by infestations of the Asian ambrosia beetle Ambrosidmus minor, and its wood-decaying symbiont Flavodon ambrosius. Finding such a log was a rare treat when I first arrived in Gainesville 3 years ago, but now we can find logs…
Specific and promiscuous ophiostomatalean fungi associated with Platypodinae ambrosia beetles in the southeastern United States
Platypodine ambrosia beetles are globally distributed and the first fungus farmers, originating 60-100 million years ago, but we still don’t understand the diversity, specificity, and in many cases taxonomic identity of their fungal crops. This extensive survey of the fungal associates of platypodines in the southeastern US gets us a whole lot closer to the…
Has Safe Harbor helped the Red-cockaded Woodpeckers?
Red-cockaded woodpeckers have had a rough time. They depend on mature, fire-maintained southeastern pine forests to feed and breed. Unfortunately, demand for timber and a really effective anti-fire campaign have reduced their once bountiful numbers to a few isolated relic populations. Conflicts between private landowner interests and enforced endangered species management has made things complicated.…
How to Sniff Out Symbioses in Complex Communities
Introduced bark and ambrosia beetles can be a real problem when they bring fungal symbionts that are also plant pathogens (think Dutch Elm Disease, Laural Wilt, etc). Native trees just don’t have the co-evolutionary history to defend themselves against such novel pathogens. That’s why we need to be able to quickly and accurately identify the…
Plasticity of mycangia in Xylosandrus ambrosia beetles
The amazing mycangium – the little pouche that ambrosia beetles use to carry living fungi while they disperse. In this study, we describe the ontogeny of the Xylosandrus beetle mycangium and its fungal load over the beetle’s life cycle, in the wild and in our lab colonies. The beetles keep the timing of fungal proliferation tight, only…