Chance or Necessity-The Fungi Co-Occurring with Ants.

Studies on carton nesting ants and domatia-dwelling ants have shown that ant-fungi interactions may be much more common and widespread than previously thought. Until now, studies focused predominantly on parasitic and mutualistic fungi-ant interactions occurring mostly in the tropics, neglecting less-obvious interactions involving the fungi common in ants' surroundings in temperate climates. In our study, we characterized the mycobiota of the surroundings of ants by identifying nearly 600 fungal colonies that were isolated externally from the bodies of workers. The ants were collected from mounds found in northern and central Poland. Isolated fungi were assigned to 20 genera via molecular identification (ITS rDNA barcoding). Among these, strains were the most frequent, belonging to eight different taxonomic sections. Other common and widespread members of Eurotiales, such as spp., were isolated very rarely. In our study, we managed to characterize the genera of fungi commonly present on workers. Our results suggest that , , , and are commonly present in surroundings. Additionally, the high diversity and high frequency of colonies isolated from ants in this study suggest that representatives of this genus may be adapted to survive in ant nests environment better than the other fungal groups, or that they are preferentially sustained by the insects in nests.