Ants – Field Talk /fieldtalk audio interviews take you into the field with ecologists Wed, 18 Dec 2013 01:13:43 +0000 en-US hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.4.3 The abandoned mutualist: When ants take their business elsewhere /fieldtalk/the-abandoned-mutualist-when-ants-take-their-business-elsewhere/ /fieldtalk/the-abandoned-mutualist-when-ants-take-their-business-elsewhere/#respond Fri, 11 Sep 2009 21:07:47 +0000 /fieldtalk/?p=164 … Read more ›]]> DSC08089_sAnt-plant mutualisms are ubiquitous in tropical areas. In these examples of cooperation in nature, plants provide nutrition and shelter for ants that live on their leaves and branches. In return, the ants provide defense, kicking out (or even killing) any herbivores that try to eat the plant. The evolution of this relationship suggests that both species now need each other for survival. But Heraldo Vasconcelos of the University of Uberlandia in Brazil noticed something strange: in some populations of an ant-plant in the genus Tococa, plants lacked ant mutualists. Join us as he tells us about his paper in the September issue of Ecology, taking us on a trip into the Brazilian cerrado, where the plight of the antless ant-plants might not be so bad after all.

]]> /fieldtalk/the-abandoned-mutualist-when-ants-take-their-business-elsewhere/feed/ 0 Lizard Evolution and the Ants In Your Pants Dance /fieldtalk/field-talk-lizard-evolution-and-the-ants-in-your-pants-dance/ /fieldtalk/field-talk-lizard-evolution-and-the-ants-in-your-pants-dance/#respond Mon, 26 Jan 2009 22:29:52 +0000 http://172468002/ … Read more ›]]> Invasive red fire ants from South America have become a major pest in southwestern U.S., bringing their stinging venom and crop-destroying ways. In this edition of Field Talk, we catch up with Tracy Langkilde, assistant professor of biology at Penn State University, who studies one of the ants’ seemingly unlikely targets: eastern fence lizards. The lizards have evolved a novel twitching response that flicks attacking ants off their bodies. But in her paper in the January issue of Ecology, Dr. Langkilde explains that since native ants don’t normally attack lizards, this behavior must have evolved in a very short time.

 

Tracy Langkilde

Ecology 2009 90:1, 208-217

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