Fungus-growing ants use antibiotic-producing bacteria to control garden parasites
Article Abstract:
A newly discovered bacterial symbiont of the attine ants seems to be a third mutualist in an ancient symbiosis among ants, domesticated fungi, parasitic fungi and antibiotic-producing bacteria. The production of antibiotics by the attine-associated Streptomyces that specifically target the growth of the specialized garden-parasite Escovopsis is strong evidence that the bacterium is an extremely evolved mutualist. It appears that microbes and their metabolites could be vital elements in the regulation of other symbiotic links between higher organisms.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1999
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
Most smooth closed space curves contain approximate solutions of the n-body problem
Article Abstract:
A few special solutions for the n-body problem require masses to be in particularly initial positions, known as central configurations. A generalization of the central-configuration approach is reported, resulting in large continuous groups of approximate solutions. The gravitational force on each particle is in proportion to the local curvature and is calculated using a version of the Biot-Savart integral.
Publication Name: Nature
Subject: Zoology and wildlife conservation
ISSN: 0028-0836
Year: 1998
User Contributions:
Comment about this article or add new information about this topic:
- Abstracts: Restoring Balance: Using Exotic Species to Control Invasive Exotic Species. Competition between native Populus deltoides and invasive Tamarix ramosissima and the impliations for reestablishing flooding disturbance
- Abstracts: Packing grains by thermal cycling. Interstellar grains in meteorites. Turning fields into grains
- Abstracts: Continents ring the changes. Making composite continents. Dating of the oldest continental sediments from the Himalayan foreland basin
- Abstracts: Possibility of chemical weathering before the advent of vascular land plants. Production of iron nanoparticles by laser irradiation in a simulation of lunar-like space weathering
- Abstracts: Growth and differentiation in the Drosophila eye coordinated by hedgehog. Turning the key on Drosophila audition