Abstract:
Fungus-animal symbioses have evolved countless times across the tree of life. While the stability of these mutualistic or parasitic interkingdom interactions often depends on optimized nutrient exchange, we lack a framework to explore whether animal-derived nutrients are optimal for fungal symbionts. I propose that this conceptual gap has constrained studies of how fungus-animal symbioses achieve ecological success as well as predictions about whether they will remain evolutionarily stable over time. I will discuss novel approaches for harnessing nutritional niche theory to identify the crucial fundamental and realized nutritional niche dimensions of fungi that mediate symbiotic stability. I will provide examples of how this can be accomplished from my research on the evolution and ecology of fungus-farming ants. This work spans field studies of free-ranging leafcutter ants in a Panamanian rainforest to in vitro experiments of isolated fungal cultivars, to recent advances in fungal genomics.
Dr. Jonathan Shik
University of Copenhagen
I am an integrative evolutionary biologist. Much of my research focuses on ants and their associates to test hypotheses across levels of biological organization, from genes in genomes, to cells in multicellular bodies, to individuals in colonies and species with whom those colonies interact.