Speaker: Dr Lily Khadempour, Rutgers University-Newark
Title: Honeypot ants as new model system for studying host-microbe symbiosis and convergent evolution
Abstract: My talk will begin by exploring the concept of symbiosis and introduce a slightly new way of looking at it before diving into my lab’s empirical work. Honeypot ants have specialized workers called repletes that they use to store sugary liquid long-term. When resources become scarce, the repletes regurgitate the food and feed the colony. Across the ant family, honeypot ants have evolved independently at eight times. My lab is using honeypot ants as a model system to explore the relationship between host and microbiome, and we are starting to ask questions about the causes and consequences of the convergent evolution on both the ants and their microbiome. I will present gut microbiome data from six species of North American Myrmecocystus honeypot ants, dive deeper into the genome of one bacterium that dominates Myrmecocystus mexicanus crops, and explore whether different genera of honeypot ants live in the same contemporary niches.