Competition hierarchy and plant defense in a guild of ants on tropical Passiflora |
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Authors: | F F Xu J Chen |
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Institution: | (1) Key Laboratory of Tropical Forest Ecology, Xishuangbanna Tropical Botanical Garden, Chinese Academy of Sciences, Mengla, 666303, Yunnan, China;(2) Graduate School of the Chinese Academy of Sciences, Beijing, 100039, China; |
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Abstract: | In facultative ant–plant interactions, ants may compete with each other for food provided by extrafloral nectar (EFN) plants.
We studied resource competition and plant defense in a guild of ants that use the same EFN resource provided by two species
of Passiflora in a seasonal rain forest in tropical China. At least 22 ant species were recorded using the EFN resource, although some
of those species were rare. Among these ants, Paratrechina sp.1 and Dolichoderus thoracicus were more aggressive than other species. Ant aggressiveness measured as ant behavioral dominance index (BDI) was positively
correlated with ant abundance on the Passiflora species studied. Ant BDI was also positively correlated to the protection that ants provided against herbivory. In Passiflora siamica, the number of workers patrolling on the plants did negatively correlate with average leaf loss per plant. We conclude that
in this facultative Passiflora–ant system, plant defense upon herbivore was indeed influenced by the total number of ants present on plant and the aggressiveness
of these ants. |
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Keywords: | |
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