Abstract
As flower visitors, ants rarely benefit a plant. They are poor pollinators, and can also disrupt pollination by deterring other flower visitors, or by stealing nectar. Some plant species therefore possess floral ant-repelling traits. But why do particular species have such traits when others do not? In a dry forest in Costa Rica, of 49 plant species around a third were ant-repellent at very close proximity to a common generalist ant species, usually via repellent pollen. Repellence was positively correlated with the presence of large nectar volumes. Repellent traits affected ant species differently, some influencing the behaviour of just a few species and others producing more generalised ant-repellence. Our results suggest that ant-repellent floral traits may often not be pleiotropic, but instead could have been selected for as a defence against ant thieves in plant species that invest in large volumes of nectar. This conclusion highlights to the importance of research into the cost of nectar production in future studies into ant-flower interactions.
Highlights
Ants are capable of disrupting pollination when visiting flowers (e.g., [1,2,3])
Is ant repellence selected to reduce aggression towards pollinators, or to prevent nectar theft, or is it due to pleiotropic effects on other floral traits? This study aimed to identify patterns of occurrence of repellence in the following ways: 1. Which plant species possess ant-repellent traits and what form do those traits take: are they effective over a long range or do ants have to contact the flowers?
Discussion a) Ant-repellence - protecting an investment in nectar? In this study floral ant-repellence was observed most frequently in plant species producing high volumes of nectar per flower
Summary
Ants are capable of disrupting pollination when visiting flowers (e.g., [1,2,3]). How often do plant traits prevent this from happening? When feeding on other plant surfaces ants can benefit a plant (e.g., preying upon herbivores, or disrupting their feeding and oviposition), whilst ants attracted by hemipteran honeydew may reduce levels of more damaging herbivores [4,5]. Some myrmecophytes provide housing (domatia) for ant colonies, as hollow stems or thorns, and thereby acquire standing armies of specialized mutualists that they may feed with EFN, protein bodies, or indirectly with hemipteran honeydew [12,13,14]. These specialized ants may provide additional benefits by pruning encroaching vegetation (e.g., [15]), or supplying nutrients to their hosts through detritus within domatia (e.g., [16])
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