Food Storage by the Savanna Termite Cornitermes cumulans (Syntermitinae): a Strategy to Improve Hemicellulose Digestibility?
Letícia Menezes, Thabata Maria Alvarez, Gabriela Félix Persinoti, João Paulo Franco, Fábio Squina, Edimar Agnaldo Moreira, Douglas Antonio Alvaredo Paixão, Ana Maria Costa-Leonardo, Vinícius Xavier da Silva, Maria Teresa Pedrosa Silva Clerici, Alberto Arab
Author Information
Letícia Menezes: Departamento de Biologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Rio Claro, SP, Brazil.
Thabata Maria Alvarez: Universidade Positivo, Curitiba, PR, Brazil.
Gabriela Félix Persinoti: Laboratório Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
João Paulo Franco: Laboratório Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
Fábio Squina: Programa em Processos Tecnológicos e Ambientais, Universidade de Sorocaba (UNISO), Sorocaba, SP, Brazil.
Edimar Agnaldo Moreira: CCNH-Center for Natural Sciences and Humanities, Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Santo André, SP, Brazil.
Douglas Antonio Alvaredo Paixão: Laboratório Nacional de Ciência e Tecnologia do Bioetanol (CTBE), Centro Nacional de Pesquisa em Energia e Materiais, Campinas, SP, Brazil.
Ana Maria Costa-Leonardo: Departamento de Biologia, Instituto de Biociências, Universidade Estadual Paulista (UNESP), Rio Claro, SP, Brazil.
Vinícius Xavier da Silva: Instituto de Ciências da Natureza, Universidade Federal de Alfenas, Alfenas, MG, Brazil.
Maria Teresa Pedrosa Silva Clerici: Department of Food Technology, School of Food Engineering, University of Campinas (UNICAMP), Campinas, SP, Brazil.
Alberto Arab: CCNH-Center for Natural Sciences and Humanities, Federal University of ABC (UFABC), Santo André, SP, Brazil. albertoarab@gmail.com. ORCID
It has been suggested that food storage inside the nest may offer termites with a nutritional provision during low resource availability. Additionally, feces employed as construction material provide an excellent environment for colonization by microorganisms and, together with the storage of plant material inside the nest, could thus provide some advantage to the termites in terms of lignocellulose decomposition. Here, we conducted for the first time a comprehensive study of the microbial communities associated to a termite exhibiting food storage behavior using Illumina sequencing of the 16S and (ITS2) regions of rRNA genes, together with enzymatic assays and data collected in the field. Cornitermes cumulans (Syntermitinae) stored grass litter in nodules made from feces and saliva located in the nest core. The amount of nodules increased with nest size and isolation, and interestingly, the soluble fraction of extracts from nodules showed a higher activity against hemicellulosic substrates compared to termite guts. Actinobacteria and Sordariales dominated microbial communities of food nodules and nest walls, whereas Spirochetes and Pleosporales dominated gut samples of C. cumulans. Within Syntermitinae, however, gut bacterial assemblages were dissimilar. On the other hand, there is a remarkable convergence of the bacterial community structure of Termitidae nests. Our results suggest that the role of nodules could be related to food storage; however, the higher xylanolytic activity in the nodules and their associated microbiota could also provide C. cumulans with an external source of predigested polysaccharides, which might be advantageous in comparison with litter-feeding termites that do not display food storage behavior.
