Novel use of dietary DNA to explore niche separation in two geographically sympatric non-leaf-cutting higher attines (Formicidae)

Understanding dietary preferences in ants is not only required to accurately describe their life histories, but is also an essential component of teasing apart how niche differentiation occurs in ant communities. Among fungus gardening ants, the leaf-cutter genera of Atta and Acromyrmex have dominated the literature in regard to their diet composition. It is much more difficult to correctly identify the substrate collected by non-leaf-cutting fungus gardening ants. On top of being smaller and more cryptic than leaf-cutting ants, most non-leaf-cutting fungus gardening ants do not create true foraging trails making it difficult and very time consuming to accurately trace the species of vegetation that they are foraging from.

Metabarcoding techniques based on dietary DNA (dDNA) extracted from the gut, stomach, or fecal matter have become an accurate and resource-effective way to determine animal diets. dDNA metabarcoding has been used to detect niche partitioning, and overlap, in several animal species. It has also been used successfully to understand seasonal and/or biogeographic based shifts in animal diets. Utilization of dDNA metabarcoding techniques to identify fungal substrate in ant gardens could be used to answer a number of ecological and natural history questions.

30 Trachymyrmex septentrionalis and 30 Mycetomoellerius turrifex colony fungus gardens were sampled from the same site across three distinct seasonal sampling periods. Individual fungus garden samples were homogenized and sent in for genetic analysis of fungal substrate material.