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Culture-Independent Identification Of Gut Bacteria In Fourth-Instar Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis Invicta Buren, Larvae, Albert Hon-Yu Lee
Culture-Independent Identification Of Gut Bacteria In Fourth-Instar Red Imported Fire Ant, Solenopsis Invicta Buren, Larvae, Albert Hon-Yu Lee
LSU Doctoral Dissertations
Red imported fire ants (RIFA), Solenopsis invicta Buren, are medical, urban, and agricultural pests from South America. Fourth-instar larvae are used by the colony to digest solid food and then regurgitate it for consumption by workers and queens. Larvae are an ideal source of investigations of obligate endosymbiotic bacteria possibly involved in nutrient distributions. I attempted to first identify what bacteria species are in the guts of larvae followed by antibiotic and microscopy work to further study their roles in the ants. The composition of the bacterial community in fire ant larvae was described with culture-independent methods utilizing 16S rDNA …