this post was submitted on 03 Nov 2023
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Today I Learned

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From the article:

Ant-attended aphids are known to excrete high-quality honeydew when ants are present. Ant attendance has a negative effect on the growth and reproduction of the attended aphids. Therefore, trade-offs should occur between the quality of honeydew and the growth and fecundity of aphid individuals. Thus, if attending ants prefer the morph excreting a high-quality honeydew, such trade-offs and resulting competitive interactions are expected between the color morphs in M. yomogicola. The morph excreting high-quality honeydew is known to have a lower reproductive rate than the other morphs[9,10]. This fact implies that if the attending ants prefer one morph, this morph is expected to excrete high-quality honeydew. Note that any such difference between morphs leads to the exclusion of the inferior morphs. Surprisingly, nearly all colonies consist of both green and red morphs in the field.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 9 months ago (5 children)

How this has 131 votes and nobody seems to be surprised to learn ants FARM aphids. Excuse me, what?

[–] [email protected] 21 points 9 months ago (1 children)

There are also some ants that farm certain types of fungus! It's really cool.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Yeah but not to eat the fungus right? They eat what eats the fungus? Can't remember the rest of this factoid.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago (1 children)

They feed the fungus leaves, which then provides the ants with honeydew in turn.

Iirc the fungus even excretes certain pheromones telling the ants what type of leaves to get.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago

Yeah that's it. I knew they farmers the fungus but couldn't remember if they ate it directly.

Thx!

[–] [email protected] 14 points 9 months ago

I learned that in biology class 20 years ago.

[–] [email protected] 11 points 9 months ago (1 children)

Have you never seen A Bug's Life? The queen has a pet aphid.

[–] [email protected] 3 points 9 months ago

I haven't actually. That movie kinda flew past me.

[–] [email protected] 4 points 9 months ago
[–] [email protected] 2 points 9 months ago* (last edited 9 months ago)