Seed Dispersal by Leaf-Cutting Ants

Abstract

Ants as dispersal agents represent a well-studied topic mainly in the case of myrmecochorous plants which provoke seed removal by the ‘elaiosome’, a seed-born appendage serving as protein and oil-rich food reward for the ants (Beattie 1985). This mode of dispersion is common among herbs of temperate mesic forests in the Northern Hemisphere, and woody shrubs in the dry sclerophyll vegetation of Africa and Australia (Beattie 1983). More recently, however, seed dispersal of nonmyrmecochorous plants has become the subject of studies in tropical forests, where ants may comprise up to one third of the entire insect biomass (Fittkau and Klinge 1973), many of them living on the ground (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990) feeding obligatory or occasionally on fruits or seeds (Kaspari 1993, 1996; Levey and Byrne 1993; Horvitz and Schemske 1994; Pizo and Oliveira 1998).