Calvin Professor Gets Grant to Study Ants

Calvin College biology professor John Wertz was recently awarded a $479,000 grant from the National Science Foundation to study “good bacteria” found in more than 100 species of tropical turtle ants.

He will be cultivating never-before-seen bacteria in the laboratory, a skill he honed while still a graduate student at Michigan State University.

“My PhD thesis was on cultivating these new bacteria [collected from termites’ guts] that had never been cultivated before,” he said. “Ninety percent of bacteria anywhere we cannot grow in the lab. This is a big problem because the way we understand more about it is by working with them in the lab.”

Wertz’s success as a graduate student was very exciting, he said. “It’s a remarkable moment when you’ve isolated a new bacterium, and you are the only person in the world who knows it exists; just you and God know about it. It’s incredible.”

A few years later, another researcher, who was unsuccessfully trying to cultivate a bacterium found in ants’ guts similar to the one Wertz had previously cultured from termites, contacted Wertz.

“He asked if I could give it a try,” said Wertz. “Of course, I said, ‘yes.’ All I knew was that they had this cool new bacterium they couldn’t culture. So they sent me the ants, I squished up their guts and using the specialized equipment we have here at Calvin, I was able to say, ‘Yes, we’ve got it!’”

What went from a small side project quickly grew into something much larger with the potential for hundreds of species of bacteria residing in the guts of ants needing cultivation.

 Wertz, along with Corrie Moreau (Field Museum of Natural History), Scott Powell (George Washington University) and Jacob Russell (Drexel University), will be studying all 117 species of turtle ants (found in tropical climates, primarily South America), particularly their bacteria—something that has never been done before.

“What we will be looking at is how bacteria are similar and how are they different between species,” said Wertz. “We really know quite little about how bacteria are functioning in turtle ants. If we find several functions of bacteria that would be really exciting.”

Information from the work can have many applications, especially in better understanding the role in bacteria in humans.

While Wertz is looking forward to getting to know about the ants, he is not leaving the termites in the dust. “I still use them in classes,” he said. “They are a great model system, and I can find plenty of them in my backyard.”