Skip to main content
bioRxiv
  • Home
  • About
  • Submit
  • ALERTS / RSS
Advanced Search
New Results

Cooperate-and-radiate co-evolution between ants and plants

View ORCID ProfileKatrina M. Kaur, Pierre-Jean G. Malé, Erik Spence, Crisanto Gomez, View ORCID ProfileMegan E. Frederickson
doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/306787
Katrina M. Kaur
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3B2
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Katrina M. Kaur
  • For correspondence: katrina.kaur@mail.utoronto.ca
Pierre-Jean G. Malé
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3B2
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Erik Spence
2SciNet Consortium, University of Toronto, 661 University Avenue, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5G 1M1
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Crisanto Gomez
3Dept Ciències Ambientals, Universitat de Girona, C/Maria Aurèlia Capmany, 69, 17003, Girona, Spain
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
Megan E. Frederickson
1Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, University of Toronto, 25 Willcocks Street, Toronto, Ontario, Canada, M5S 3B2
  • Find this author on Google Scholar
  • Find this author on PubMed
  • Search for this author on this site
  • ORCID record for Megan E. Frederickson
  • Abstract
  • Full Text
  • Info/History
  • Metrics
  • Supplementary material
  • Preview PDF
Loading

Abstract

Mutualisms may be “key innovations” that spur diversification in one partner lineage, but no study has evaluated whether mutualism accelerates diversification in both interacting lineages. Recent research suggests that plants that attract ant mutualists for defense or seed dispersal have higher diversification rates than non-ant associated plant lineages. We ask whether the reciprocal is true: does the ecological interaction between ants and plants also accelerate diversification in ants? In other words, do ants and plants cooperate-and-radiate? We used a novel text-mining approach to determine which ant species associate with plants in defensive or seed dispersal mutualisms. We investigated patterns of trait evolution and lineage diversification using phylogenetic comparative methods on a large, recent species-level ant phylogeny. We found that ants that associate mutualistically with plants have elevated diversification rates compared to non-mutualistic ants, suggesting that ants and plants cooperate-and-radiate.

Copyright 
The copyright holder for this preprint is the author/funder, who has granted bioRxiv a license to display the preprint in perpetuity. It is made available under a CC-BY-NC-ND 4.0 International license.
Back to top
PreviousNext
Posted April 23, 2018.
Download PDF

Supplementary Material

Email

Thank you for your interest in spreading the word about bioRxiv.

NOTE: Your email address is requested solely to identify you as the sender of this article.

Enter multiple addresses on separate lines or separate them with commas.
Cooperate-and-radiate co-evolution between ants and plants
(Your Name) has forwarded a page to you from bioRxiv
(Your Name) thought you would like to see this page from the bioRxiv website.
CAPTCHA
This question is for testing whether or not you are a human visitor and to prevent automated spam submissions.
Share
Cooperate-and-radiate co-evolution between ants and plants
Katrina M. Kaur, Pierre-Jean G. Malé, Erik Spence, Crisanto Gomez, Megan E. Frederickson
bioRxiv 306787; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/306787
Reddit logo Twitter logo Facebook logo LinkedIn logo Mendeley logo
Citation Tools
Cooperate-and-radiate co-evolution between ants and plants
Katrina M. Kaur, Pierre-Jean G. Malé, Erik Spence, Crisanto Gomez, Megan E. Frederickson
bioRxiv 306787; doi: https://doi.org/10.1101/306787

Citation Manager Formats

  • BibTeX
  • Bookends
  • EasyBib
  • EndNote (tagged)
  • EndNote 8 (xml)
  • Medlars
  • Mendeley
  • Papers
  • RefWorks Tagged
  • Ref Manager
  • RIS
  • Zotero
  • Tweet Widget
  • Facebook Like
  • Google Plus One

Subject Area

  • Evolutionary Biology
Subject Areas
All Articles
  • Animal Behavior and Cognition (4683)
  • Biochemistry (10361)
  • Bioengineering (7675)
  • Bioinformatics (26337)
  • Biophysics (13528)
  • Cancer Biology (10686)
  • Cell Biology (15440)
  • Clinical Trials (138)
  • Developmental Biology (8497)
  • Ecology (12821)
  • Epidemiology (2067)
  • Evolutionary Biology (16860)
  • Genetics (11399)
  • Genomics (15478)
  • Immunology (10617)
  • Microbiology (25218)
  • Molecular Biology (10223)
  • Neuroscience (54472)
  • Paleontology (401)
  • Pathology (1668)
  • Pharmacology and Toxicology (2897)
  • Physiology (4342)
  • Plant Biology (9247)
  • Scientific Communication and Education (1586)
  • Synthetic Biology (2558)
  • Systems Biology (6781)
  • Zoology (1466)