Pitcher plants are several different carnivorous plants that have modified leaves known as pitfall traps—a prey-trapping mechanism featuring a deep cavity filled with digestive liquid. The traps of what are considered to be "true" pitcher plants are formed by specialized leaves. The plants attract and drown their prey with nectar.
Protocooperation is where two species interact with each other beneficially; they have no need to interact with each other - they interact purely for the gain that they receive from doing this. It is not at all necessary for protocooperation to occur; growth and survival is possible in the absence of the interaction. The interaction that occurs can be between different kingdoms.
The Sundaland heath forests, also known as Kerangas forest, is a type of tropical moist forest found on the island of Borneo, which is divided between Brunei, Indonesia, and Malaysia, as well as on the Indonesian islands of Belitung and Bangka, which lie to the west of Borneo.
Myrmecophytes are plants that live in a mutualistic association with a colony of ants. There are over 100 different genera of myrmecophytes. These plants possess structural adaptations that provide ants with food and/or shelter. These specialized structures include domatia, food bodies, and extrafloral nectaries. In exchange for food and shelter, ants aid the myrmecophyte in pollination, seed dispersal, gathering of essential nutrients, and/or defense. Specifically, domatia adapted to ants may be called myrmecodomatia.
Myrmelachista schumanni, also known as the lemon ant, is a species of ant from South America. It is notable for the creation of devil's gardens. Using its own herbicide, they kill off all the plants in an area except for the myrmecophytes, or ant-plants, in which they reside.
Myrmecochory ( ; from Ancient Greek: μύρμηξ, romanized: mýrmēks and χορεία khoreíā is seed dispersal by ants, an ecologically significant ant–plant interaction with worldwide distribution. Most myrmecochorous plants produce seeds with elaiosomes, a term encompassing various external appendages or "food bodies" rich in lipids, amino acids, or other nutrients that are attractive to ants. The seed with its attached elaiosome is collectively known as a diaspore. Seed dispersal by ants is typically accomplished when foraging workers carry diaspores back to the ant colony, after which the elaiosome is removed or fed directly to ant larvae. Once the elaiosome is consumed, the seed is usually discarded in underground middens or ejected from the nest. Although diaspores are seldom distributed far from the parent plant, myrmecochores also benefit from this predominantly mutualistic interaction through dispersal to favourable locations for germination, as well as escape from seed predation.
Nepenthes bicalcarata, also known as the fanged pitcher-plant, is a tropical pitcher plant endemic to northwestern Borneo, Indonesia. It is a myrmecophyte noted for its mutualistic association with a species of ant, Camponotus schmitzi. As an ant-fed plant it lacks many of the features that characterise the carnivorous syndrome in Nepenthes, including viscoelastic and highly acidic pitcher fluid, the waxy zone of the pitcher interior, and possibly even functional digestive enzymes.
Elaiosomes are fleshy structures that are attached to the seeds of many plant species. The elaiosome is rich in lipids and proteins, and may be variously shaped. Many plants have elaiosomes that attract ants, which take the seed to their nest and feed the elaiosome to their larvae. After the larvae have consumed the elaiosome, the ants take the seed to their waste disposal area, which is rich in nutrients from the ant frass and dead bodies, where the seeds germinate. This type of seed dispersal is termed myrmecochory from the Greek "ant" (myrmex) and "circular dance" (khoreíā). This type of symbiotic relationship appears to be mutualistic, more specifically dispersive mutualism according to Ricklefs, R.E. (2001), as the plant benefits because its seeds are dispersed to favorable germination sites, and also because it is planted by the ants.
Myrmecodia is a genus of epiphytic myrmecophytes, native to Southeast Asia and present in Indochina, Malaysia, the Southwest Pacific, the Philippines, and extending south to Fiji and Cape York in Queensland, Australia. It is one of five ant-plant genera in the family Rubiaceae, the others being Anthorrhiza, Hydnophytum, Myrmephytum, and Squamellaria.
Myrmecophily is the term applied to positive interspecies associations between ants and a variety of other organisms, such as plants, other arthropods, and fungi. Myrmecophily refers to mutualistic associations with ants, though in its more general use, the term may also refer to commensal or even parasitic interactions.
Colobopsis schmitzi, synonym Camponotus schmitzi, is a species of ant native to Borneo, which is commonly known as the diving ant, swimming ant or pitcher-plant ant, due to their habit of diving into the digestive fluids of their plant host Nepenthes bicalcarata. They are endemic to the island of Borneo.
Vachellia drepanolobium, more commonly known as Acacia drepanolobium or whistling thorn, is a swollen-thorn acacia native to East Africa. The whistling thorn grows up to 6 meters tall. It produces a pair of straight spines at each node, some of which have large bulbous bases. These swollen spines are naturally hollow and occupied by any one of several symbiotic ant species. The common name of the plant is derived from the observation that when wind blows over bulbous spines in which ants have made entry and exit holes, they produce a whistling noise.
A domatium is a tiny chamber that houses arthropods, produced by a plant.
The acacia ant is a species of ant of the genus Pseudomyrmex. These arboreal, wasp-like ants have an orange-brown body around 3 mm in length and very large eyes. The acacia ant is best known and named for living in symbiosis with the bullhorn acacia throughout Central America.
Tetraponera is a genus of ants in the subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae that are commonly known as slender ants and are characterized by their arboreal nature and slender bodies. The 96 described species of Tetraponera all of which live in hollow structures of plants and trees, such as thorns or branches; these hosts are known as myrmecophytes. Tetraponera species are closely related to the New World genus of ants Pseudomyrmex, but differ in their relationships with host plants.
Pearl bodies are small, lustrous, pearl-like food bodies produced from the epidermis of leaves, petioles and shoots of certain plants. They are rich in lipids, proteins and carbohydrates, and are sought after by various arthropods and ants, that carry out vigorous protection of the plant against herbivores, thus functioning as a biotic defence. They are globose or club-shaped on short peduncles, easily detached from the plant, and are food sources in the same sense as Beltian bodies, Müllerian bodies, Beccarian bodies, coccid secretions and nectaries. They occur in at least 19 plant families (1982) with tropical and subtropical distribution.
Hydnophytum formicarum, commonly called a "Baboon's head" or "Ant plant", is an epiphyte native to Southeast Asia and is considered critically endangered in Singapore. It is a myrmecophyte as ants live in its tuber, also known as a caudex, and pollinate its flowers. It resides in open-canopied areas, rainforests, and terrestrial regions of high elevation.
Tetraponera tessmanni is a species of ant in the subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae, which is native to tropical Central Africa, where it inhabits the hollow stems of the liana Vitex thyrsiflora.
Tetraponera aethiops is a species of ant in the subfamily Pseudomyrmecinae, which is native to tropical Africa. It is found living in the forest in association with Barteria fistulosa, a small tree.
Myrmecodia tuberosa, the ant plant, is an epiphytic plant. The species has a symbiotic relationship with some ant species where ants use the hollow body of the plant as shelter, defend the plant from other insects, and provide nutrients to the plant through their waste.
