Researchers at Aarhus University havediscovered in a new studythat ant poop leave behind on plant leaves serves as a worthful fertilizer for the plants .
You have often seen pismire wandering about on leaves – even in tall Tree . In fact , it is the plants themselves that attract them by secreting sugar - containing ambrosia , which the ants eat with dandy pleasure .
And on their journey around trunks and leaf , the ants often kill other insects that could otherwise damage the plants .
Weaver ants eat insects when wandering around the crowns of trees and bushes, leaving nutrient-rich waste that the plants can absorb and use directly.
This beneficial relationship between ants and many plants has been known for years . orchard apple tree growers have even used this cognition in the battle against harmful insects in organic Malus pumila grove by moving wood emmet from the forest and creating new formicary in the orchards .
Now investigator have found yet another confirming burden of the ants ’ visit to the trees . Their urine or feces , eliminate together , contain amino dose and urea – substances that are commercially used to spray on leaves to fertilise the plants .
A small coffee plantation in the laboratory
In tropical areas , there are many different species of ants that exist exclusively in the tree crowns . They do not come down to the ground and therefore can not get alimentation there . This apply , for example , to weaver ants that live in the crowns of many unlike Tree and bushes – including coffee tree . Each Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree can have up to 60,000 emmet .
In the laboratory , the researchers build a mini - coffee plantation with several private coffee tree tree diagram . The central coffee bean Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree hold a dependency of weaver pismire .
All the coffee trees were point in water , so the ants could not move from tree to tree diagram unless there was a span to take them across . To allow them to move between tree , the researcher build suspension bridges between some of the trees .
Weaver ants eat insects when wandering around the crowns of trees and bushes, leaving nutrient-rich waste that the plants can absorb and use directly.
On the central tree , the ants were fed with an amino Elvis – genus Glycine . The researchers were able to follow the pronounce N in the neighboring Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree to which the ant walked over via the suspension bridges .
And the results were quite amazing .
Intravenous nutritional supplement
First , the researchers discover that the visited Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree had a higher content of nitrogen than the trees to which the ant did not have access . The trees visited by the ant also had larger crowns than the Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree without emmet .
On the ‘ sojourn trees ’ some of the parting were wrap so that the ants could not leave their waste here . But also in these folio , the research worker were able-bodied to line the label atomic number 7 .
“ For the first metre , we have show that food from ant dissipation are taken up by the leaves and channel to other spot in the tree diagram , ” says elderly scientist Joachim Offenberg , Department of Bioscience , Aarhus University , who was in charge of the survey .
“ This has great ecological importance . The pismire , which in the first place feed on dirt ball in the tree , digest the insects and give the nutrients on a silver record to the plants . you may almost say that the plant receive the nutrition intravenously just where they need it , ” explains Joachim Offenberg .
Great ecological importance
The ants seem oft on new shoot and on fruits – both orbit of the plant that can profit from an extra nutrient input .
The nutritionary supplement to the leafage can be a swell vantage for many dissimilar plant , and the researchers will now investigate how far-flung the phenomenon is .
“ We bonk that globally there are good deal of plants inhabited by ant . The nutritional add-on for their leaves can have a major ecological significance and may also have been critical for the evolution of ant - plant interactions , ” says Joachim Offenberg . Read more :
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