Plants make the most of visiting ants.Many picnickers have had to relocate after ants invaded and began to carry off their summer supper. But certain epiphytes, those wily plants that live on trees, derive much of their nutrients from visiting ants, a new study shows. In exchange for shelter, ants provide the plants with significant amounts of carbon dioxide carbon dioxide, chemical compound, CO2, a colorless, odorless, tasteless gas that is about one and one-half times as dense as air under ordinary conditions of temperature and pressure. and nitrogen, Kathleen K. Treseder of Stanford University Stanford University, at Stanford, Calif.; coeducational; chartered 1885, opened 1891 as Leland Stanford Junior Univ. (still the legal name). The original campus was designed by Frederick Law Olmsted. David Starr Jordan was its first president. and her colleagues report in the May 11 Nature. Dischidia major, an epiphyte epiphyte (ĕp`əfīt') or air plant, any plant that does not normally root in the soil but grows upon another living plant while remaining independent of it except for support (thus differing from a parasite). from Sarawak, Malaysia, gets 39 percent of its carbon from carbon dioxide exhaled by ants living in its sacklike leaves, the team reports. The carbon diffuses through small openings in the leaves. Almost 30 percent of D. major's nitrogen comes from ant debris, including feces feces or excrement or stools Solid bodily waste discharged from the colon through the anus during defecation. Normal feces are 75% water. The rest is about 30% dead bacteria, 30% indigestible food matter, 10–20% cholesterol and other fats, , dead ants, and scavenged insect parts. Plants send their roots to areas where this nutritious debris accumulates. Treseder and her colleagues calculated how much of the plants' carbon and nitrogen comes from the ants by analyzing isotopes of these elements, she says. Ants respire re·spire v. 1. To breathe in and out; inhale and exhale. 2. To undergo the metabolic process of respiration. 3. To breathe easily again, as after a period of exertion. carbon dioxide that lacks carbon-13 isotopes, and ant debris is rich in nitrogen-15 isotopes, they report. The researchers knew how much carbon-13 the plants would contain if they derived their carbon from the atmosphere only. They had also determined the nitrogen concentration of the leaves of a different Dischidia species that grows on the same trees but does not harbor ants. |
|
||||||||||||||||||
Printer friendly
Cite/link
Email
Feedback
Reader Opinion