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Project Noah Nature School
Acacia cornigera and Pseudomyrmex ferruginea
The Bullhorn Acacia is one of my favorite ant-plant relationships. It's hollow thorns provide nesting homes for the ant Pseudomyrmex ferruginea, an ant found nowhere else but on these plants. It is native to Mexico and Central America. The ants, though very small, aggressively protect the plant from herbivores, invasive seedlings and practically anything that comes in contact with the plant. The tree provides the ant with protein-lipid nodules called Beltian bodies on its leaflet tips and carbohydrate-rich nectar from glands on its leaf stalk. Both of these are visible in the first picture and both have no other known function than to feed the ants. This particular tree had very few ants, with even some spider webbing present. The top of the tree was dry (last picture) and it is easy to see how this Acacia species is called the Bullhorn. The bottom of the plant was in regrowth and was replete with nectar glands and Beltian bodies. There is also a tiny Pseudomyrmex visible on the leaf stem in the first picture.
Heavy shrubbery along the highway between San Cristobal de Las Casas and Tuxtla Gutierrez, km 11.5, 865 meters.
Spotted on Dec 26, 2013
Submitted on Jan 3, 2014
4 Comments
Thank you Sckel, it is fascinating isn't it. The relationship between ants and Cercropia trees is also really neat. I spent a summer with Dan Janzen in Costa Rica once and he had all of us suctioning up all the ants from a Cercropia tree to find the queen. I felt sick for 2 days from all the pheromones we inhaled! I have to study the African Acacia more to see the differences between theirs and ours.
I love it, thanks for sharing, Lauren. Just recently found out about this relationship of ants and Acacias. I have a note on my FB, studies on the relationship between ants / large herbivores / Acacias, in the African savannah.
https://www.facebook.com/notes/sckel-kel...
Thank you Bernadette :) These have to be seen to be believed! It is just so neat and there must be millions of years of co-evolution between these species for this to have become so complex and interdependent!
Great spotting, Lauren!