DOI: 10.5061/dryad.sc574
title: Data from: Metabolism and the rise of fungus cultivation by ants

description: Most ant colonies are comprised of workers that cooperate to harvest
 resources and feed developing larvae. Around 50 million years ago (MYA),
 ants of the attine lineage adopted an alternative strategy, harvesting
 resources used as compost to produce fungal gardens. While fungus
 cultivation is considered a major breakthrough in ant evolution, the
 associated ecological consequences remain poorly understood. Here, we
 compare the energetics of attine colony-farms and ancestral
 hunter-gatherer colonies using metabolic scaling principles within a
 phylogenetic context. We find two major energetic transitions. First, the
 earliest lower-attine farmers transitioned to lower mass-specific
 metabolic rates while shifting significant fractions of biomass from ant
 tissue to fungus gardens. Second, a transition 20 MYA to specialized
 cultivars in the higher-attine clade was associated with increased colony
 metabolism (without changes in garden fungal content) and with metabolic
 scaling nearly identical to hypometry observed in hunter-gatherer ants,
 although only the hunter-gatherer slope was distinguishable from isometry.
 Based on these evolutionary transitions, we propose that shifting
 living-tissue storage from ants to fungal mutualists provided energetic
 storage advantages contributing to attine diversification and outline
 critical assumptions that, when tested, will help link metabolism, farming
 efficiency, and colony fitness.
description: The metabolic and
 demographic composition of attine colony-farmsThe raw data used for
 statistical inference regarding attine metabolism (MR, µl CO2 hr^-1) and
 demography. All masses are dry weight (mg). For Apt. dentigerum and C.
 longiscapus colony-farms, we did not make separate recordings of garden MR
 after removing workers. For these two species, we thus present only a
 whole colony-farm MR measurement. Mass is dry mass in mg. Locality
 abbreviations: Arizona (A), Barro Colorado Island, Panama (P), Oklahoma
 (O), Texas (T). Garden mass and MR contains embedded larvae. Notes: * 2
 queens, whose individual masses were 0.44 and 0.40 mg, § worker mass
 includes 16 males (5.84 mg, 19% of total mass), ∫ Queen not removed prior
 to measurement of worker MR.Table
 A1.xlsxThe metabolic and
 demographic composition of hunter-gather colonies.Raw data used to analyze
 the metabolic rate (MR; µ l CO2 hr-1) and demography of hunter-gatherer
 colonies. Collection localities are either Oklahoma (O) or Panama (P). N
 refers to the number of colonies sampled for a given species. Worker
 number and mass sums minor and majors for colonies of Pheidole.
 Reproductive mass sums adult male and female alate tissue. Mass is dry
 mass in mg. Means followed by SD in parentheses.TABLE
 A2.xlsxData used to calculate
 mass-specific metabolic rates of workersData used for
 examination of individual worker metabolic rates (MR: µl CO2 mg-1 hr-1),
 presented in online figure A2. Mass values are dry mass
 (mg).Table
 A3.xlsxData for comparison of
 mass-specific MR of workers and fungus gardensMean mass-specific
 metabolic rate (MR; µl CO2 mg-1 hr-1) for workers and fungal gardens, and
 results of one sample t-tests comparing worker MR with the mean value for
 their fungal gardens. Size measured as dry mass. N indicates number of
 individual workers measured for MR, and the number of individual colonies
 from which fungal gardens were measured for MR. Means followed by SD in
 parentheses.TABLE
 A4.xlsxAccession numbers for
 the sequences used to infer the ant phylogenyAccession numbers for
 the sequences used to infer the ant phylogeny. In species where molecular
 data were not available (indicated with *), we used sequences from closely
 related congeners. COI barcodes for the species listed as ‘Processing’
 were provided by D. Donoso and obtained in collaboration with the
 Biodiversity Institute of Ontario, using sequencing techniques and
 analytical tools in the Barcode of Life Database (BOLD;
 www.boldsystems.org/). New sequences for the study, as well as sequences
 for C. sumichrasti and P. villosa, are publicly available in the BOLD
 database, in the project ‘AOFBA’ named Ants of BCI_2_Project Atta.
 Molecular data included three genes: Cy-tochrome Oxidase I (COI;
 mitochondrial), wingless (nuclear), and long wavelength rho-dopsin (LWRh;
 nuclear).Table
 A5.xlsx