University of Barcelona: The origins of farming insects: ambrosia fungi cultivated by beetles for more than 100 million years.
ENPNewswire-June 24, 2021--University of Barcelona: The origins of farming insects: ambrosia fungi cultivated by beetles for more than 100 million years
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Release date- 23062021 - A beetle bores a tree trunk to build a gallery in the wood in order to protect its lay.
As it digs the tunnel, it spreads ambrosia fungal spores that will feed the larvae. When these bore another tree, the adult beetles will be the transmission vectors of the fungal spores in another habitat. This mutualism among insects and ambrosia fungi could be more than 100 years old -more than what was thought to date- according to an article published in the journal Biological Reviews.
The study analyses for the first time the symbiotic associations and the coevolution between ambrosia fungi and beetles from a paleontological perspective using the Cretaceous fossil records of these biological groups. Among the authors of the study are the experts David Peris and Xavier DelclOs, from the Faculty of Earth Sciences and the Biodiversity Research Institute of the UB (IRBio), and Bjarte Jordal, from the University of Bergen (Norway).
Beetles that grew fungi millions of years before human agriculture
Some termites, ants and beetles developed the ability to grow fungi in order to eat millions of years ago. This mutualism between insects and fungi -one of the top studied symbiosis in the natural field- is an analogous evolutionary strategy in the farming activities of the human species since the Neolithic revolution.
Understanding the origins of the symbiosis between insects and fungi is a field of interest in several scientific disciplines. Nowadays, the mutualism between ambrosia symbiont beetles and fungi is the cause of forest and crop plagues that cause serious ecological and economic losses 'it remains unclear which ecological factors facilitated the origin of fungus farming and how it transformed into a symbiotic relationship with obligate dependency', notes David Peris, first author of the study.
When did the lineage of farming insects begin?
Historically, phylogenetic studies suggest beetle fungiculture started more than 50 million years ago -before other insects- and some studies dated it back to 86 million years ago. 'The symbiotic relationship between fungus and beetles would have probably originated more than 100 million years ago, during the early Cretaceous, in groups of beetles that had gone unnoticed', reveals the...
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