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In this way, ants can gain extra protein and ensure efficient resource extraction by maintaining honeydew flow rates that do not exceed the ants' collection capabilities. [3] Even with some predation by ants, aphid colonies can reach larger densities with tending ants than colonies without.
Energy flow is the flow of energy through living things within an ecosystem. [1] All living organisms can be organized into producers and consumers , and those producers and consumers can further be organized into a food chain .
The organic material that the ants contribute to the plant falls into three categories; nest building material (material such as leaves, bark, or other plant matter), ant-created products (such as waste, dead enemies, or the bodies of dead ants), and the final category is food that the ants themselves consume.
It affects the exchanges of mass (water evaporation, CO 2) and of energy (heat) between the plant and the atmosphere by renewing the air at the contact with the leaves . It is sensed as a signal driving a wind-acclimation syndrome by the plant known as thigmomorphogenesis , leading to modified growth and development and eventually to wind ...
The energy converted through photosynthesis is carried through the trophic levels of an ecosystem as organisms consume members of lower trophic levels. Primary production can be broken down into gross and net primary production. Gross primary production is a measure of the energy that a photoautotroph harvests from the sun.
Myrmecotrophy, meaning "ant-fed," is the ability of plants to absorb nutrients from debris piles left by ant nests or, in the case of Nepenthes bicalcarata, from ant egesta. [13] The tropical tree Cecropia peltata obtains 98% of its nitrogen from the waste deposited by its ant counterparts.
The scale of the farming done by fungus-farming ants can be compared to human's industrialized farming. [5] [11] [78] [79] A colony can "[defoliate] a mature eucalyptus tree overnight". [33] The cutting of leaves to grow fungus to feed millions of ants per colony has a large ecological impact in the subtropical areas in which they reside. [7]
Seeds can be dispersed away from the parent plant individually or collectively, as well as dispersed in both space and time. The patterns of seed dispersal are determined in large part by the dispersal mechanism and this has important implications for the demographic and genetic structure of plant populations, as well as migration patterns and ...