01 CONJECTURE
Ants ants ants: ants and trees
Do you like ants? Probably, when you built your very own ant farm at home as a kid. Splendid, is it not? The organised manner in which they build their nests, send out legionaries to explore and fend off natural enemies or take down prey or how they deploy workers to harvest the surrounding resources. But then, you remember that time you got stung by a bullet ant and well it hurt like.. a bullet would. So, do we like ants? Can we live with them? Well, we kind of have to..
For every human being there are an estimated 200 million ants in existence. The number is simply too high to ignore. So for now, we are stuck with them. Luckily, we have a myriad of ways to deal with ant invasions at our homes, farms, factories and schoolyards. Trees, however, do not have this luxury. In fact, ants are as much a part of their lives as trees are of ants’ lives whether they like it or not. In fact, there are many examples of a truly symbiotic relationship between both.
In what follows, we explore some examples of the romantic, morbid and symbiotic relationship between trees and ants:
1. Bullet ants
In latin America, bullet ants terrorise humans with their famous bullet sting. So much so that the Satere Mawe people of Brazil use bullet ants as part of their ritual to become a warrior. Nests are typically situated at the base of trees, granting colonies access to nectar, tree sap, small insects and their larvae. Bullet ants will go as far as to explore the upper canopy of rainforests.
2. Carpenter ants
In north America, carpenter ants are usually attracted by decay in trees and feed on dead wood fiber. Their presence can usually be spotted by the build up of sawdust at the base of trees
3. Red ants
In Europe, red ants tend to nest around trees as it guarantees a lack of soil disturbance (caused by foot traffic or mowing) and gives them access to moisture and food resources. Moreover, red ants may protect trees in so far that they eat other insects that damage trees and their roots.
4. Weaver ants
In Asia and Oceania, weaver ants build tree borne nests weaving together leaves using larval silk. Weaver worker ants take out insects that are potential plant pests and thusly benefit trees they use as their habitat by decreasing herbivory.
5. Acrobat ants
In Africa, acrobat ants – among others – protect acacia trees as acacia nectar provides them with sugar that makes the ants chemically dependent on it. This dependency results in ants valiantly guarding the trees from invasive herbivores.
So, um, what does it all matter? Well, ants do matter. Their population is ginormous and a disruption in the ant supply as connector between different forms of insect, animal, plant and human life would create a gigantic ripple effect through all those symbiotic partners’ livelihoods. Given the number of ants living in trees and the benefits these ants provide to our diverse microcosms and biospheres – from connecting bacteria, clearing decaying carcasses to pest control and as a food source for various predators, investing in arboreal life seems like a smart thing to do.
If you enjoyed reading about ants and trees, you may want to learn more about the fragile relationship between tree life and the proliferation of CO2 right HERE:
If you want us to answer any queries you may have, please shoot us a message via the contact page or get in touch via social media: