One ant to another: ‘I have arranged flower no 124, how far have you come?’

Foliar uptake of nitrogen from ant fecal droplets: an overlooked service to ant plants*

Always look for miracles ❤️

Note

*Journal of Ecology torsdag d. 31. august, 2017 (DOI: 10.1111/1365-2745.12841).

“We have shown for the first time that nutrients from the ants’ excrement are taken up by the leaves and transported around to other places in the tree,” says senior researcher Joachim Offenberg, Department of Bioscience, Aarhus University, who led the study.

“It has great ecological significance. The ants, which primarily feed on insects in the trees, transform the insects and, so to speak, serve the nutrients on a silver platter to the plants. Yes, you could almost say that the plants get their nutrition intravenously right where the need is ,’ explains Joachim Offenberg.