One instance is the 'solitary wasp' who uses actinobacteria to preserve the stinged larvae of other insects as food for their developing offsprings in cells of their mud nest. Are there other such examples in nature by other organisms?
It is difficult to say when the was concerned 'learnt' how to use the actinobacteria. However, solitary wasps are evolutionarily much older than the social wasps and the social wasps have been around longer than the genus Homo. So it is almost certain that the insect figured it out first.
Honey is not a bad example of preserving food, since 5000 year old honey was found to be palatable. Keeping in mind, of course, that it is possible to ferment honey to make mead, so the fact that the honey in the Egyptian tombs did not ferment for millennia says something about food preservation!
Thank you Dr Peter for your reasonable answer to my question, since my field of research is pertaining to antimicrobials, my aim is to look for unusual habitats/ resources for novel/ unexplored species of microbes for novel metabolites. you are a nature lover you can be a person to suggest some unexplored habitats in Uttarakhand.
Thank you Prof. Bisht. I would suggest the Askot landscape, especially the Madkot valley as a place where you can probably find some interesting microbes. It is a unique system in the western Himalaya.
The first example of an extremly sofisticated kind of nutrient storage/food preservation taht comes to my mind are honeypot ant. (a quick and dirty reference to wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Honeypot_ant)
And there is of cause the case of complete agricultural system in leafcutter ants and some termite species taht have a complete agricultural cycle for their food production.
Thank you Peter for suggesting Askot as probable unusual/ unexplored site in Uttarakhand and also thanks to Jens Carl for suggesting a referencethat is very interesting forme.
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