• DOI:10.1038/nplants.2016.181
Corpus ID: 23748032

Obligate plant farming by a specialized ant

@article{Chomicki2016ObligatePF,
  title={Obligate plant farming by a specialized ant},
  author={Guillaume Chomicki and S. Renner},
  journal={Nature Plants},
  year={2016},
  volume={2}
}

Guillaume Chomicki, S. Renner

Published 2016

Biology, Medicine

Nature Plants

View on Nature

umsl.edu

Save to Library

Create Alert

Cite

Launch Research Feed

Many epiphytic plants have associated with ants to gain nutrients. Here, we report a novel type of ant–plant symbiosis in Fiji where one ant species actively and exclusively plants the seeds and fertilizes the seedlings of six species of Squamellaria (Rubiaceae). Comparison with related facultative ant plants suggests that such farming plays a key role in mutualism stability by mitigating the critical re-establishment step.