THE EFFECTS OF MUTUALISTIC ANTS ON APHID LIFE HISTORY TRAITS

By T. Flatt, W. Weisser. 2000

177 citations recorded by the source corpus.

The relationship between homopterans and ants is generally thought to be mutualistic, as both partners seem to benefit from an association. In aphids, previous studies have shown that ant tending improves the survival and reproduction of aphid colonies, mainly by protection of aphids from enemy attack. However, the effects of ant tending on the fitness of individual aphids have rarely been addressed. We investigated the effects of ant tending on life history traits of aphids feeding singly on a host plant, in the absence of natural enemies. A factorial design allowed us to control for variation in the level of tending effort among individual ant colonies. The presence of workers of the ant Lasius niger had a strong positive effect on the fitness of individuals of the aphid Metopeurum fuscoviride. Ant-tended individuals lived longer, matured earlier, had a higher rate of re- production, and a higher expected number of offspring than aphids not tended by ants. An aphid's longevity was significantly correlated with the daily mean number of workers tending it. The strong dependence of aphid fitness on the level of ant tending shows that ants can influence aphid life history traits even when aphids occur singly on plants.

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

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/6bb8d65b560f4f9f1209766496ca8f96e9ae4f2b

How researchers see this paper

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In Ecology, Evolution, Behavior and Systematics

1. R. Karban
2. Claire Detrain
3. J. Delabie
4. Martin Heil
5. A. Agrawal
6. Marc T. J. Johnson

In Genetics

1. R. Karban
2. Claire Detrain
3. J. Delabie

In Insect Science

1. Lise Diez
2. R. Karban
3. Claire Detrain
4. J. Delabie
5. E. Haubruge
6. B. Wathelet
7. F. Verheggen
8. A. Agrawal

Citations in the corpus

• Trophobiosis Between Formicidae and Hemiptera (Sternorrhyncha and Auchenorrhyncha): an Overview (2001, background): “The survival rate does not depend of the number of trophobionts living in the aggregation (Flatt & Weisser 2000, Morales 2000).”
• Damage to sagebrush attracts predators but this does not reduce herbivory (2007, background): “The ants may have provided many benefits that favored aphids (Flatt & Weisser, 2000) or increasing populations of aphids may have attracted more ants.”
• Aphid–ant mutualism: how honeydew sugars influence the behaviour of ant scouts (2010, background): “Because ant guarding usually increases the reproductive success of the tended sap feeders (El-Ziady & Kennedy, 1956; Flatt & Weisser, 2000; Verheggen et al., 2009), evolution may have tailored honeydew composition to suit their ant mutualists.”