Biology Homework Help

1) Give an example of an ant species that performs higher agriculture (but not leaf-cutter) that likely acquired an Pseudonocardia from lower coral fungus agriculture (based on Fig. 1)? 

2) Give an example of an ant species that performs lower coral fungus agriculture that recently likely acquired an Pseudonocardia from a non-coral, non-yeast lower agriculture (based on Fig. 1)?

3) What are the differences among in vivo, in vitro, in silico, in planta? 

4) When the researchers isolated bacteria from ants, why did they choose to only keep and include Pseudonocardia isolates in this study?

5) What is the hypothesis tested with the permutation analysis? What is the prediction if their hypothesis is supported? What is the prediction if their hypothesis is rejected?

6) What is the hypothesis tested with the bioassay experiment? What is the prediction if their hypothesis is supported? What is the prediction if their hypothesis is rejected?

7) What is the difference in the two p-values in Table 1? Why does it make sense that the p-value should be 9.9 x 10-5 from all four of the groups?

8) What are two other hypotheses for why the researchers may find a non-random association between Pseudonocardia and the ants?