Results Flashcards
Does allogrooming activities of termites affect their innate immune system?
The study of Liu et al., 2019 showed that allogrooming affects innate immune system of termites when the allogrooming is not successful. Innate immune system only acts when conidia were able to penetrate the cuticles termites. Immune genes were significantly higher (termicin) when the infection is inside termite bodies and allogrooming can do nothing.
Do you have comparisons for tall mound height vs short in terms of fungal load?
There is no correlation on mound height to soil sample types fungal loads since fungal loads in soil samples were insignificantly different. For the termites, there is still no clear correlation whether the height of the mound affects the fungal loads carried by termites within their cuticle since the second largest mound (T1) had the least number of fungal loads (1 only)
Why do you think fungal communities in termite cuticles were different from soil samples?
We collected workers and isolated fungal communities in workers, these workers were actually inhabiting the inner portion of the mound until the royal chamber (Pervez 2018) and basically were not usually inhabiting the termitaria soil and tunnel soil we had collected. This result may suggest that the innermost portion of the mound may hold more diverse species of fungi.
Why is it that there is no Termitomyces in isolated fungi?
Although M. gilvus is known to have mutualistic relationship with Termitomyces, we have not isolated any strain of the genus in the study. This may be due to the fact that Termitomyces were only strictly maintained in fungus combs and termite guts (as it is required for Termitomyces to pass through the termite gut before being incorporated in fungus comb, to eliminate unnecessary and transient pathogens) per Makonde et al., 2013.
Some of the trees were not monophyletic.
The purpose of the molecular analysis is to ID the fungi and not to resolve the trees of any genus. Hence, as long as our DNA sequences clade to an established sequence, then we are done identifying the isolate.
