endosymbiosis
gregladen | December 20, 2012Mitochondria are cool, important, and fascinating. You know the basic story. Mitochondria are the result of endosymbiosis. A bacterim or bacteria-like organism insinuated itself into another bacterium or bacteria-like organism. The former was small, the latter large. A relationship started up whereby the smaller one became an organelle in the larger one, and Eukaryotic life was formed. You probably also know that in multi-celled organisms mitochondria may be passed on by one sex (female) so paleogenetic research can sort out female lineages by looking only at the DNA found in the…
awild | December 19, 2009
Camponotus rosariensis tending scale insects in Argentina
Another piece of the Camponotus hyperdiversity puzzle was published this week in BMC Evolutionary Biology. The reasons behind the tremendous richness of Camponotine ants- a worldwide group of conspicuous insects containing more than a thousand species- are unknown, but recent explanations have focused on the nutritional relationship between the ants and their endosymbiotic Blochmannia bacteria. These gut-dwelling microbes may have allowed camponotines to capitalize on honeydew resources nutritionally unavailable to other ants,…