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Abstract
Surveys of leucocoprinaceous fungi (Lepiotaceae, Agaricales, Basidiomycota) in the rain-forests of Panama and Brazil revealed several free-living counterparts of fungi cultivated by primitive attine ants (the lower Attini, Formicidae, Hymenoptera), adding to two such collections identified in a survey by CitationMueller et al (1998). The accumulated evidence supports the hypothesis that perhaps all fungi of lower attine ants have close free-living relatives. Free-living counterparts of ant-cultivated fungi are collected most readily during the early rainy season; in particular these are free-living mushrooms of fungal counterparts that are cultivated as yeasts in gardens of ants in the Cyphomyrmex rimosus group. Free-living and symbiotic fungi of these yeast-cultivating ant species might represent a promising study system to compare the biology of sympatric, conspecific fungi existing outside versus inside the attine symbiosis.
We thank two anonymous reviewers for their comments on the manuscript. The research was supported by an REU supplement to NSF CAREER award DEB-9983879 and an undergraduate research award to TV from the University of Texas at Austin. ASM was supported by a fellowship from the US Environmental Protection Agency and a US Fulb-right grant. We thank the Autoridad Nacional del Ambiente of the Republic of Panamá and the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute for collecting permits, and we thank M. Leone for logistical support.