Summary of Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy
Summary of Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy
Chandra Steele
Mississippi University for Women
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Summary of Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy
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Herbivorous ants may be essential to the tropical rainforest. Typically ants are seen as
predators. But these ants are cryptic herbivores that feed on the other insects that digest plants
and plants substances. Even though ants are relatively small, these insects help balance and
control the rainforest environment.
Hunt stated (2003), “For decades, Edward O. Wilson, believed ants are ecologically
dominant animals of tropical rainforests”. Ants are more than predators or scavengers, they are
herbivores. Hunt (2003) writes, David and colleagues (6) demonstrated that many rainforest ant
species do, in fact feed primarily or in part as herbivores. This same group researched ants,
plants and other insects to prove that ants are not at the bottom of the food chain. There are a
great number of ants that are herbivores. In fact these ants survive on other leaf chewing insects,
pollen, fungal spores and hyphae, and leaf surface micro flora (epiphylls) (Hunt, 2003).
Since they keep leaf-chewing insects from harvesting all the plants nutrients, herbivorous
ants are seen as patrollers. They feed from the leaf-chewing insects. Hunt says, “Yet logic
suggests that the cost extracted by trophobionts must be less than the peotential cost of leaf
herbivory that would take place if the ants that tend trophobionts were not on patrol against leaf
herbivores(9) (2003). Since herbivorous ants are similar to scavenging ants they too have natural
instinct to prey on their victims. And their victims are rainforest canopy plants. Therefore, if the
rainforest continues to be destroyed by global warming, then the ants too will be affected by
global warming. Their physiological abilities could be affected both short and long term (Hunt,
2003).
Summary of Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy
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This article shows the difference in both scavenger ants as well as herbivorous ants. The
herbivorous ants should be looked at as an essential part of the rainforest. They are also an
excellent example of how a small insect has such a great impact on an area as large as the
rainforest.
Summary of Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy
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References
Hunt, J. (2003). Cryptic Herbivores of the Rainforest Canopy. Science, 300(5621), 916.
Retrieved February 21, 2110, from General Science Collection database.