{"id":12698,"date":"2022-01-03T15:32:39","date_gmt":"2022-01-03T21:32:39","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/?p=12698"},"modified":"2022-01-03T15:49:59","modified_gmt":"2022-01-03T21:49:59","slug":"ants-in-my-plants-rerun","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/ants-in-my-plants-rerun\/","title":{"rendered":"Ants in My Plants Rerun"},"content":{"rendered":"

Note: All links below go to external sites.<\/em><\/p>\n

Salutations,\u00a0BugFans,<\/p>\n

Here we are, in the trough between Christmas and New Year\u2019s.\u00a0 The interminable Christmas movies have been put to bed (YAY!), and reruns rule.\u00a0 Here, too.<\/p>\n

Back in 2015, the BugLady suspended operations during the month of May, posting a teaser at the start of her month off \u2013 a fern fiddlehead with an ant crawling on it.\u00a0 When she resumed her posts in June, she led with the story of that ant.\u00a0 Here it is:<\/p>\n

The results of taking off the month of May are in: many pictures of plants, flowering and non; not so many pictures of insects, even though the BugLady was checking plants like wild geranium, dandelions, and autumn olive that put out masses of flowers.\u00a0 It\u2019s a little worrisome.\u00a0 The nannyberry is hopping, though \u2013 sweat bees, small twitchy wasps, syrphid\/hover\/flower flies, an occasional honeybee, etc.\u00a0 And the first crop of dragonflies is emerging.\u00a0 The other bit of fallout was that with no Tuesday deadline to aim for, the BugLady was, for the most part, clueless about which day of the week it was.\u00a0 Adrift.<\/p>\n

As promised, the story of the fern and the ant, a story that comes with a side order of botany.<\/p>\n

\"AntsIt is hardly breaking news that plants produce nectar, a sugary liquid that the plant makes in nectaries that are located within the flowers.\u00a0 Along with sugars, nectar may include amino acids, oils, vitamins, proteins, and more.\u00a0 Why do they do it?\u00a0 To attract the moths, bees, wasps, butterflies, and even hummingbirds and bats that inadvertently fertilize plants by carrying pollen to the next flower they visit.\u00a0 \u201cI feed you; you fertilize me<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0 After fertilization, a plant may reabsorb its nectar.<\/p>\n

BUT \u2013 a fair number of plants produce nectar in places other than their flowers, and these areas, called Extrafloral nectaries (EFN), don\u2019t have anything (directly) to do with pollination.\u00a0 EFN may be found on flower stalks, leaf axils, petioles, or leaf margins, or on various flower parts, and the nectar they provide is sweeter than the plant\u2019s sap.\u00a0 Some EFN<\/a> are conspicuous; others are not.\u00a0\u00a0 Bracken ferns, which are non-flowering plants, have EFN at the bases of their three fronds as those fronds are just starting to unfurl.<\/p>\n

Why do they do it?\u00a0 EFN were originally (and erroneously) thought to be a waste disposal system for the plant, allowing it to get rid of metabolic by-products.\u00a0 And while scientists are still not 100% sure why plants make EFN, they are probably there for ants and other predatory insects like ladybugs.<\/p>\n

\"AntsEFN could be decoys – \u201cI feed you here, and you stay away from my flowers<\/i>.\u201d\u00a0 It turns out that ants, despite their notable presence on flowers, are seldom effective pollinators.\u00a0 Their exoskeletons are slick and are groomed frequently; they are pedestrians, which limits the number of flowers they can visit; and they don\u2019t exhibit the \u201cflower constancy\u201d of bees, who will concentrate on a particular type of flower on a foraging trip, thus increasing the odds that the pollen they carry will be deposited on the correct species.\u00a0 Plus, an antibiotic secreted by some ants and found on their exoskeletons kills pollen.\u00a0 Ants do love nectar, though, and they may hog the nectar without delivering the payload and damage a flower in the process.<\/p>\n

In the case of the bracken fern and its ants, it has always been assumed that EFN produce a reward for services rendered \u2013 an \u201cI feed you; you protect me from herbivores<\/i>\u201d scenario \u2013 but here\u2019s where it gets a bit sticky, scientifically.\u00a0 Studies that measure the degree of protection contradict each other.\u00a0 Researchers in the 1960\u2019s described significant benefits to the fern foliage; recent studies suggest that while some grazers might be chased away in the early days as fronds are uncurling (when the plant produces the most sugar), there\u2019s not a significant difference in foliage on ant vs ant-free ferns by the end of the season (when sugar secretion is very low).<\/p>\n

Post-floral or pericarpial nectaries (PN) are much less common.\u00a0 Some plants continue to produce nectar around the base of the flower after the petals fall and throughout the development of the fruits.\u00a0 The foraging ants thus protect the seeds (or not, say some studies).\u00a0 Apparently, garlic mustard has this in its bag of tricks.<\/p>\n

Besides protection, ants provide other services to plants.\u00a0 In exchange for food (and sometimes shelter \u2013\u00a0some plants have special structures where ants can live),\u00a0<\/span>foraging ants keep leaf surfaces clean, which helps keep plants fungus\/disease-free.\u00a0 Ants may prune or thin vegetation, optimizing growing conditions and reducing competition, and they may assist with seed dispersal.<\/p>\n

Ant-plant interactions enjoy a lovely vocabulary.\u00a0\u00a0A\u00a0myrmecophile<\/i>\u00a0is an organism (usually an animal) that consorts with ants;\u00a0myrmecophily<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cant-love\u201d) refers to favorable relationships between ants and other organisms; and a\u00a0myrmecophyte<\/i>\u00a0(\u201cant-plant\u201d) is a plant that carries on mutually beneficial relationships with ants.\u00a0 Through a process called\u00a0myrmecochory<\/i>\u00a0(ant-dispersal\u201d), ants spread and plant many wildflower seeds (according to some sources, ants \u201cplant\u201d almost one-third of spring ephemerals in eastern North America.\u00a0 Bloodroot is one of them).\u00a0 Attached to the seeds is an ant-attracting \u201cpacket\u201d called an\u00a0elaiosome<\/i>.\u00a0 After toting the seeds back to their nests, ants break off the elaiosome and eat it, leaving the seed to germinate.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

There are close to 4,000 plants worldwide, in more than 100 plant families, in 745 genera, that grow EFN Thirty-nine are fern species.\u00a0 Familiar practitioners include vetches (Vicia), gourds (Cucurbita<\/i>), wild cherry (Prunus<\/i>), elderberry (Sambucus<\/i>), locust (Robinia), willow (Salix), wild sunflower (Helianthus), milkweed (Asclepias<\/i>), and peony.\u00a0 The BugLady found some on the petiole (leaf stem) of a high-bush cranberry.\u00a0 When she first posted this, \u201cThe World List of Plants with EFN\u201d<\/i> was temporarily off-line.\u00a0 It\u2019s back here<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Go outside \u2013 watch ants.<\/p>\n

The BugLady<\/i><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Note: All links below go to external sites. Salutations,\u00a0BugFans, Here we are, in the trough between Christmas and New Year\u2019s.\u00a0 The interminable Christmas movies have been put to bed (YAY!), and reruns rule.\u00a0 Here, too. Back in 2015, the BugLady …<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":30795,"featured_media":12704,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"footnotes":"","uwm_wg_additional_authors":[]},"categories":[8],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-12698","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-bug-of-the-week"],"yoast_head":"\nField Station<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/uwm.edu\/field-station\/bug-of-the-week\/ants-in-my-plants-rerun\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Ants in My Plants Rerun\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Note: All links below go to external sites. 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