Ants are probably the most dominant insect group on Earth, representing ten to fifteen percent of animal biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. Flowering plants, meanwhile, owe their evolutionary success to an array of interspecific interactions—such as pollination, seed dispersal, and herbivory—that have helped to shape their great diversity. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions brings together findings from the scientific literature on the coevolution of ants and plants to provide a better understanding of the unparalleled success of these two remarkable groups, of interspecific interactions in general, and ultimately of terrestrial biological communities. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions synthesizes the dynamics of ant-plant interactions, including the sources of variation in their outcomes. Victor Rico-Gray and Paulo S. Oliveira capture both the emerging appreciation of the importance of these interactions within ecosystems and the developing approaches that place studies of these interactions into a broader ecological and evolutionary context. The collaboration of two internationally renowned scientists, The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactions will become a standard reference for understanding the complex interactions between these two taxa.
This important work explores the natural history, experimental approach, and integration of evolutionary and ecological literature of ant-plant mutualisms.
This book presents current research on all types of ant-plant interactions, and concentrates on understanding these often complex relationships in evolutionary and ecological terms. The range of interactions varies from herbivory (leaf-cutter ants) to complex symbiosis. Many ants prey on plant pests, thus protecting the plant from harm, receiving in exchange nectar and/or nest sites. In some cases the ants tend and protect other insects such as butterfly larvae or Homopterans (which include the aphids and cicadas) which may benefit the ants at the expense of both the host plant and the other insects. Some ants are known to be seed dispersers, and in at least one plant (cocoa) they appear to affect rates of pollination. A significant proportion of these interactions exhibit a high degree of mutualism, making this book part of a growing literature on the ecological determinants of mutualistic behaviour. The thirty-seven chapters by more than fifty contributors range in geographical coverage from northern and southern temperate zones, to the New World tropics, to Australia and South-east Asia. The emphasis throughout, even in the more descriptive chapters, is on possible explanations for observed phenomena. Workers in ecology, evolution, and behavior will welcome this compendium of information on a subject that has become a modern testing ground for evolutionary ecology.
The incredible global diversity of ants, and their important ecological roles, mean that we cannot ignore the significance of ants in ecological systems. Ant Ecology takes the reader on a journey of discovery from the beginnings of ants many hundreds of thousands of years ago, through to the makings of present day distributions.
A comprehensive, multi-author treatise on the social insects of the world, with some auxiliary attention to such adjacent topics as subsocial insects and social arachnids. The work is to serve as a very convenient, yet authoritative reference work on the biology and systematics of social insects of the world. This is a project of the International Union for the Study of Social Insects (IUSSI), the worldwide organizing body for the scientific study of social insects.
Secretions and emissions in biological systems play important signaling roles within the organism but also in its communications with the surrounding environment. This volume brings together state-of-the-art information on the role of secretions and emissions in different organs and organisms ranging from flowers and roots of plants to nematodes and human organs. The plant chapters relate information regarding the biochemistry of flower volatiles and root exudates, and their role in attracting pollinators and soil microbial communities respectively. Microbial chapters explain the biochemistry and ecology of quorum sensing and how microbial communities highly co-adapted to plants can aid in bio-energy applications by degrading ligno-cellulosic materials. Other chapters explain the biology of secretions by nematodes, algae and humans, among other organisms. This volume will be a welcome addition to the literature, as no other book covers aspects related to biological secretion in such a holistic and integrative manner.
The associations between insects and microorganisms, while pervasive and of paramount ecological importance, have been relatively poorly understood. The third book in this set, Insect Symbiosis, Volume 3, complements the previous volumes in exploring this somewhat uncharted territory. Like its predecessors, Volume 3 illustrates how symbiosis resear
This book is concerned with two problems: how eusociality, in which one individual forgoes reproduction to enhance the reproduction of a nestmate, could evolve under natural selection, and why it is found only in some insects-termites, ants and some bees and wasps. Although eusociality is apparently confined to insects, it has evolved a number of times in a single order of insects, the Hymenoptera. W. Hamilton's hypothesis, that the unusual haplodiploid mechanism of sex determination in the Hymenoptera singled this order out, still seems to have great explanatory power in the study of social ants. We believe that the direction, indeed confinement, of social altruism to close kin is the mainspring of social life in an ant colony, and the alternative explanatory schemes of, for example, parental manipu lation, should rightly be seen to operate within a system based on the selective support of kin. To control the flow of resources within their colony all its members resort to manipulations of their nestmates: parental manipulation of offspring is only one facet of a complex web of manipul ation, exploitation and competition for resources within the colony. The political intrigues extend outside the bounds of the colony, to insects and plants which have mutualistic relations with ants. In eusociality some individuals (sterile workers) do not pass their genes to a new generation directly. Instead, they tend the offspring of a close relation (in the simplest case their mother).