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Communication in Ant–Plant Symbioses

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Plant Communication from an Ecological Perspective

Part of the book series: Signaling and Communication in Plants ((SIGCOMM))

Abstract

Plant communication abilities are the subject of intensive research. They have been particularly investigated in the context of signalling herbivore activity and responding to these signals. In this chapter, we review the current knowledge on communication between plants and ants in ant–plant symbioses. Chemistry is the preponderant channel in ant–plant communication. Communication is identified in five contexts: the selection of seeds by ants to sow ant-gardens, the detection of the host plant by founding queens, the discrimination of the host plant by the inhabiting ants to prune exogenous vegetation, the selective continuous patrolling on young shoots by workers and the damage-induced ant-mediated plant protection. Implications of communication for the evolutionary ecology of ant–plant symbioses are discussed and directions for future research are given.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Doyle McKey for discussions and proof-reading the manuscript, and Finn Kjellberg for stimulating discussions. Studies of ant–plant interactions were funded by two grants from the French Agence Nationale de la Recherche to R.B. (“Young scientists” programme, research agreement no. ANR-06-JCJC-0127, and “Biodiversity” programme, IFORA project).

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  1. Centre d’Ecologie Fonctionnelle et Evolutive, UMR 5175, CNRS 1919 route de Mende, 34293, Montpellier cedex 5, France

    Rumsaïs Blatrix

  2. Department of Structural and Functional Botany, Faculty Centre of Biodiversity, Faculty of Life Sciences, University of Vienna, Rennweg 14, 1030, Vienna, Austria

    Veronika Mayer

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  1. Inst. Zelluläre und Molekulare, Botanik (IZMB), Universität Bonn, Kirschallee 1, Bonn, 53115, Germany

    František Baluška

  2. Agricultural Sciences, Department for Ecology, Swedish University of, Uppsala, 750 07, Sweden

    Velemir Ninkovic

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Blatrix, R., Mayer, V. (2010). Communication in Ant–Plant Symbioses. In: Baluška, F., Ninkovic, V. (eds) Plant Communication from an Ecological Perspective. Signaling and Communication in Plants. Springer, Berlin, Heidelberg. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-642-12162-3_9

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