Wildlife Wednesday: Nothing seedy here, just ants being forest stewards!
As the early flowering plants continue their northern blooms, along the southern AT they are gearing up for next year, producing seeds that hold the next generation. While plants have evolved many ways of seed dispersal, including wind, water, and gravity, dispersal by animals remains an important evolutionary relationship.
In eastern forests, it is estimated about 30 percent of plants are myrmecochorous which is a fancy word meaning “dispersed by ants”. The ant is an important insect to the woodland ephemerals.
Ants are insects of the family Formicidae, and for perspective that’s a big family, containing over 12,000 species. However, one genus is said to account for three-fourths of total seed dispersal in eastern forests: Aphaenogaster spp. This genus is made up of several hard-to-distinguish species that have large, slim bodies and long legs.
Left to right: Winnow Ant (Aphaenogaster rudis) and Tawny Collared Ant (Aphaenogaster fulva) (photo credit: Cecil Smith)
What compels these ants to scatter seeds? Well, the seeds often have a fatty, nutrient-rich segment called an “elaiosome” which is from the Greek for “oil body”! In the process of collection, ants carry seeds back to their nest, and once used for their fatty treat, seeds have a new place to germinate.
So, as you continue to observe the woodland floor for life, take a moment to appreciate the rapid ebb and flow of marching ants- collecting, supporting, and connecting forest ecosystems.
From left to right: Yellow trout lily fruit (photo credit: Gary James), red trillium fruit (photo credit: @friendlyforest), and Dutchman's breeches fruit (photo credit: Jay Heiser)
Examples of species whose seeds are spread by ants are trilliums, trout lilies, bloodroot, and dutchman's breeches.
Sources and further reading:
Ness, J. H., Morin, D.F., Giladi, I. Oikos. November 2009. Uncommon specialization in a mutualism between a temperate herbaceous plant guild and an ant: are Aphaenogaster ants keystone mutualists?
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