Insects like ants can be considered as one of the most important bacterial dispersal vectors. Moreover, because ants are able to produce antibiotic compounds to protect themselves against pathogenic microbes, they may selectively disperse bacteria. Ants are formidable ecosystems engineers and frequently interact with various plants on which they can spread bacteria while foraging. Once bacteria have colonized the leaves, plant-segregated compounds and microbe-microbe competition shape the plant-associated bacterial community and affects the plant health. Therefore, it could be assumed that ants could selectively disperse specific bacteria communities to their foraging plants and indirectly drive the plant health status.
The project aims to get deeper in the role of ants in selectively dispersing bacteria species and its effect on plant health. It will fill the gap of knowledge about bacterial communities’ dispersion by insects with direct evidence of dispersal interactions at community level.
Project Funded by a pre-doc PRELUDIUM grant from the Polish National Science Center (NCN).