Herbivory of Leaf-Cutting Ants

By D. Wirth, D. Herz, Prof. Dr. Ronald J. Ryel, Prof. Dr. Wolfram Beyschlag, Prof. Dr. Bert Hölldobler. Ecological Studies, 2003

184 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Subfields: Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics, Genetics, Plant Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/60e65b4027553c556f19c6ad22909220c536db2d

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. I. Leal
2. M. Tabarelli
3. R. Wirth
4. H. H. De Fine Licht
5. J. Boomsma
6. Heraldo L. Vasconcelos
7. Emilio Bruna
8. A. Farji-Brener

In Genetics

1. I. Leal
2. M. Tabarelli
3. R. Wirth
4. H. H. De Fine Licht
5. J. Boomsma
6. Heraldo L. Vasconcelos
7. A. Farji-Brener
8. I. Armbrecht

In Plant Science

1. Emilio Bruna
2. E. Vieira‐Neto
3. Heraldo L. Vasconcelos
4. J. Boomsma
5. H. H. De Fine Licht
6. I. Armbrecht
7. A. N. Costa

Citations in the corpus

• The Multiple Impacts of Leaf‐Cutting Ants and Their Novel Ecological Role in Human‐Modified Neotropical Forests (2014, background): “Seed manipulation by LCA includes carrying them to the subterranean nests and deposition on refuse dumps outside the nest, often after the fleshy fruit or arils have been removed or exhausted by the symbiotic fungus (Farji-Brener & Silva 1996, Wirth et al. 2003).”
• Forage collection, substrate preparation, and diet composition in fungus‐growing ants (2010, background): “In general, leaf-cutting ants cut more fresh leaves in tropical rainy seasons (Howard, 1987; Wirth et al., 1997, 2003) and are more opportunistic in dry seasons when more than 50% of the collected material may consist of non-green plant material such as stipules, fruits, seeds, and flower parts…”
• Do herbivores exert top-down effects in Neotropical savannas? Estimates of biomass consumption by leaf-cutter ants (2008, background): “…is 1.3-3.7 times greater than that by all other cerrado insects combined (range 4.6-9.3%, Fowler & Duarte 1991, Marquis et al. 2001), and 5.2-6.8 fold greater than estimates of leaf consumption by Atta in tropical rain forests (range 1.6-2.5%, Haines 1978; Wirth et al. 2003, but see Cherrett 1989).”
• Cutting More from Cut Forests: Edge Effects on Foraging and Herbivory of Leaf‐Cutting Ants in Brazil (2007, methodology): “Leaf-cutting ants (LCA) are dominant herbivores in the neotropics and play an important role in structuring forest communities (Wirth et al. 2003).”
• Leaf-cutting ants revisited: Towards rational management and control (2012, background): “Wirth et al. (2003) found that an increase in resource heterogeneity in a Panamanian rain forest was the result of a variably (patchy) distributed increase in light availability and nutrient concentrations.”