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The Complex Ant–Plant Relationship Within Tropical Ecological Networks

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Ecological Networks in the Tropics

Abstract

The tools involved in the study of ecological networks are relatively new and very useful to improve the knowledge about communities, biodiversity, and their conservation. In many tropical habitats, ants form the major part of the arthropod fauna found on vegetation and, therefore, it is extremely common to observe ants establishing ecological interactions with the host plants, where they find and use nectar, oils, pollen, arils, and seeds as food resources. In this chapter, we show that ant–plant interactions are dynamic, diverse, worldwide spread, and very manipulative which fit perfectly as models in studies dealing with interaction networks. For this, we have conducted global review in the distribution of studies on ant–plant networks and highlighted the most recurrent structural patterns observed in ant–plant networks and the main mechanisms and process behind this structure. Finally, we pointed out the limitations and new directions for the study of ant–plant networks in tropical environments.

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Acknowledgements

Authors thank to the dozens of collaborators that helped them in field and laboratory in the past two decades studying ant–plant interactions in the tropics. We thank also Pedro Luna who helped us to obtain information available in the literature on ant–plant networks. KDC and HMTS thanks for grants from CNPq, Fapemig, and CAPES.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Laboratório de Ecologia Comportamental e de Interações (LECI), Instituto de Biologia, Universidade Federal de Uberlândia, Uberlândia, MG, 38408-100, Brazil

    Kleber Del-Claro & Helena Maura Torezan-Silingardi

  2. Universidade Tecnológica Federal do Paraná, Campus Santa Helena, Santa Helena, PR, Brazil

    Denise Lange

  3. Programa de Pós-graduação em Entomologia, Universidade de São Paulo, Ribeirão Preto, SP, 14040-901, Brazil

    Diego Vinicius Anjos & Eduardo Soares Calixto

  4. Red de Ecoetología, Instituto de Ecología A.C., Carretera antigua a Coatepec 351, El Haya, Xalapa, Ver, CP 91070, Mexico

    Wesley Dáttilo

  5. Instituto de Neuroetología, Universidad Veracruzana, Av. Dr. Luís Castelazo s/n, 91190, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

    Victor Rico-Gray

Authors
  1. Kleber Del-Claro
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  2. Denise Lange
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  3. Helena Maura Torezan-Silingardi
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  4. Diego Vinicius Anjos
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  5. Eduardo Soares Calixto
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  6. Wesley Dáttilo
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  7. Victor Rico-Gray
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Corresponding author

Correspondence to Kleber Del-Claro .

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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Red de Ecoetologia, Instituto de Ecologia AC, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

    Wesley Dáttilo

  2. Universidad Veracruzana, Xalapa, Veracruz, Mexico

    Victor Rico-Gray

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Del-Claro, K. et al. (2018). The Complex Ant–Plant Relationship Within Tropical Ecological Networks. In: Dáttilo, W., Rico-Gray, V. (eds) Ecological Networks in the Tropics. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-68228-0_5

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