t is not enough to be busy; so are the ants. The question is: what are we busy about?
— Henry David Thoreau
If each type of organism in the world was ranked based on total weight, ants would dominate. If each type of terrestrial species were assessed based on numbers, ants are still predicted to rank first. They are predators, scavengers, herbivores and omnivores. They hunt, farm, organize complex communities and even cultivate their own fungi!
Ants comprise 2 percent of current global species diversity but at least a third of the world’s biomass (or weight). In the Amazon basin, scientists estimate that the weight of ants is approximately four times greater than all land vertebrates combined.
Angiosperms, or flowering plants, have dominated the plant kingdom for more than 100 million years with over 235,000 species. In tropical rain forests, plants and ants have evolved specialized relationships that help them survive better together, not apart. The evolutionary success of some flowering plants may result from benefits bestowed by partnerships with ants.
Through time, ants and plants have co-evolved, meaning that their behavior and characteristics are the end result of living together.
In ecology, when two organisms live together in a beneficial relationship, it is called mutualism. Mutualisms are akin to reading the best science fiction tales. Scientists are still discovering new secrets and complexities about these mutualisms.
For plants, strategies for defense are critical to survival because plants cannot run away from enemies. Instead, they must devise security measures effective against organisms that try to eat them. Over time, plants have evolved different mechanisms to protect their immobile forms from invasion. One of the cleverest adaptations is to entice ants to serve as watchdogs to protect the plant from enemies.
To ensure success, plants produce sweet snacks for the ants to sip as they rove around the plant, defending its boundaries. This allocation of nectar, usually located in a specialized plant organ called an extrafloral nectary, is a small price to pay for homeland security of the plant.
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Experiments by ecologists found that when ants were experimentally removed from host plants, their leaves were immediately victimized by invading marauders; but plants with ants in residence kept their foliage intact. Both ants and plants benefit from this relationship, hence the term mutualism.
Acacia plants attract specialized ants (a group called Pseu-domyrmex) that live in hollow thorns, defending the entire tree from enemies. Over time, trees with well-developed hollow thorns have survived better than individuals without hollow thorns. The aggressive Pseudomyrmex ants will attack, bite and fight to their death, to keep their resident acacia tree safe from animals that chew the foliage.
Some plants are fed by ants. In Southeast Asia, certain air plants host ant populations that bring in materials to sustain the epiphyte. Other ants in Central America cultivate their own homes in the canopy, called ant-gardens, composed of certain species of air plants. These associations involve a combination of homeland security provided by the ants and real estate offered by the plants.
What are the true costs and benefits for each party? Science is still working on these intricate details of these amazing relationships.
In many cases, ants are part of an even more complex system, including either aphids or wasps or other organisms that either provide rewards or add defense. Such tri-trophic or sometimes four-tiered relationships are difficult for scientists to untangle, yet critical to the vitality of the ecosystem. Some ants also serve as seed dispersal agents, transporting and/or cleaning seeds and recruiting seedlings.
But as scientists begin to discover the complex relationships between animals and animals, and plants and animals in the tropics, these forests are threatened by deforestation due to human activities. Animals and plants are intricately connected in these tropical systems, and the conservation of all components is necessary to ensure forest health.
Despite their small size, ants represent the “glue” for many ecological interactions. In the future, the natural defense systems of ant-plants could be useful applications for agriculture. Could ants offer “free” pest control to crops?
Only time will tell if we can harness the secrets of tropical ants and plants before they disappear.