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Ants have feasted on plants for millions of years, but eventually, the plants developed a feature system that allowed them to use ants foraging for their benefit.
Over time, the plants have evolved to produce a nectar that attracts the ants and hollow spines that ants can use as shelter. Sometimes ants will even defend a plant against attack or help spread the seed of the plant.
It is a mutually beneficial relationship and an example of how complex interactions between two organisms evolve over time.
Researchers from Field Museum conducted a study to better understand this evolutionary relationship and to find out which organism triggered the interaction, the characteristics of the plant or the ant-fodder.
"The question was whether ants were developing behaviors to take advantage of plants or if their structures were evolving to take advantage of ants," said Rick Ree, co-author of the study.
The study was published in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences and the researchers examined the genetic history of 1,700 species of ants and 10,000 kinds of plants.
Image (c) Field Museum, Corrie Moreau
Ants and plants date back to the age of the dinosaurs, but it is difficult to study these ancient interactions because there is so little fossil evidence of the relationship between plants and ants.
"There are very few fossil traces of these structures in plants and they do not go back very far in the past. And there are tons of ant fossils, but they usually do not show these ant behaviors – we do not necessarily see an ant kept in amber carrying a seed, "Matt Nelsen said. lead author of the study.
To help fill the information gap, researchers examined and analyzed DNA and ecological databases to trace the genetic background of different plant characteristics.
The researchers mapped the history of ants-friendly features in plants, and found that plants developed these attractive characteristics in response to ants. It turns out that ants have been using plants longer than plants.
"Some ants do not use the plants directly for a reasonable price, while others depend on them for food, food and nesting," Nelson said. "We discovered that to fully engage in the use of plants, ants first began to feed on the trees, then incorporated plants into their diet, and from there they started to nest in the trees. Although this gradual shift towards greater reliance on plants is intuitive, he still surprised us. "
Plants seem to benefit more from this relationship, as researchers have found that plant-dependent ants are not better off, from an evolutionary point of view, than other ant species that do not feed and do not feed. do not nest in plants.
"We do not see any part of the ants family tree that includes ants that depend on plants to feed or diversify or grow their habitat faster than parts of the tree that do not have these interactions," he said. Nelsen. "This study is important because it gives insight into how these extensive and complex interactions have evolved."
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By Kay Vandette, Earth.com Editor
Image credit: c) Field Museum, Corrie Moreau
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