Diaspore removal by ants

Abstract

The first stage of the myrmecochory is the removal of diaspores from the fruit or from the forest litter by ant workers. This stage can be quantitatively described by the removal rate, which is expressed as the number of diaspores taken by ants per unit of time. Previous authors have focused their experiments mainly on the role of environmental factors, such as weather, season, or time of day on removal rate (Hughes and Westoby, 1990), and on the interaction between a given plant species and a particular ant species (Kjellsson, 1985; Pacini, 1990; Mark and Olesen, 1996) or between one plant species and a complex of ant species (Culver and Beattie, 1980; Nesom, 1981; Clay, 1983; Bond and Stock, 1989; Higashi et al., 1989; Wein and Pickett, 1989). Very few studies have been undertaken to clarify the relationship between a complex of plant species and a single ant species (Gunther and Lanza, 1989; Baroni-Urbani and Nielsen, 1990). The present chapter is based mainly on the results of the authors’ field experiments, in which some aspects of interactions between the complex of plant species and the complex of ant species in the eastern European (Central Ukraine) deciduous forest were studied at the stage of seed removal.