Myrmecotrophy

Ants provide benefits to plants in co-evolved ant-plant symbioses. In some of these mutualistic relationships, ants provide nutrients to plants.

Pinkalski et al. (2017) reported that leaves of coffee trees are able to take up nitrogen, derived from ant faecal droplets left by Oecophylla smaragdina, through their leaves. They suggest foliar uptake of ant-provided nutrients could be a heretofore unknown general mechanism for ant-plant relationships to provide important, ongoing fertilisation benefit to plants.

References

• Pinkalski, C., K. M. V. Jensen, C. Damgaard, and J. Offenberg. 2018. Foliar uptake of nitrogen from ant faecal droplets: An overlooked service to ant-plants. Journal of Ecology. 106:289-295. doi:10.1111/1365-2745.12841