The evolution of plant cultivation by ants

Laura C.E. Campbell; E. Toby Kiers; Guillaume Chomicki

doi:10.1016/j.tplants.2022.09.005

The evolution of plant cultivation by ants

Laura C.E. Campbell, E. Toby Kiers, Guillaume Chomicki^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Ecology & Evolution

Research output: Contribution to Journal › Review article › Academic › peer-review

Abstract

Outside humans, true agriculture was previously thought to be restricted to social insects farming fungus. However, obligate farming of plants by ants was recently discovered in Fiji, prompting a re-examination of plant cultivation by ants. Here, we generate a database of plant cultivation by ants, identify three main types, and show that these interactions evolved primarily for shelter rather than food. We find that plant cultivation evolved at least 65 times independently for crops (~200 plant species), and 15 times in farmer lineages (~37 ant taxa) in the Neotropics and Asia/Australasia. Because of their high evolutionary replication, and variation in partner dependence, these systems are powerful models to unveil the steps in the evolution and ecology of insect agriculture.

Original language	English
Pages (from-to)	271-282
Number of pages	12
Journal	Trends in Plant Science
Volume	28
Issue number	3
Early online date	10 Nov 2022
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tplants.2022.09.005
Publication status	Published - Mar 2023

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor Susanne Brink for helpful comments on the manuscript and Emma Hindhaugh for the drawings shown in Figure 1 , and Jérôme Orivel, Milan Janda, and Florian Menzel for discussion, and Günter Gerlach, Jerôme Orivel, Milan Janda, and Benoît Chomicki for photos used in Figure 2 , and Marjorie G. Weber for the R code used to produce the phylogenetic tree seen in Figure 2 B. L.C.E.C. is funded by a UK Natural Environment Research Council doctoral training scholarship ( NE/S00743/1 ). E.T.K. is funded with the support of the Ammodo Science Award 2019 for Natural Sciences, an NWO VICI fellowship. G.C. is funded by a UK Natural Environment Research Council Independent Research Fellowship ( NE/S014470/1 ) and an ERC/UKRI frontier research grant ( EP/X026868/1 ).

Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s)

Keywords

agriculture
ant–plant interactions
farming
insect agriculture
mutualism
seed dispersal

UN SDGs

This output contributes to the following UN Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs)

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10.1016/j.tplants.2022.09.005

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title = "The evolution of plant cultivation by ants",

abstract = "Outside humans, true agriculture was previously thought to be restricted to social insects farming fungus. However, obligate farming of plants by ants was recently discovered in Fiji, prompting a re-examination of plant cultivation by ants. Here, we generate a database of plant cultivation by ants, identify three main types, and show that these interactions evolved primarily for shelter rather than food. We find that plant cultivation evolved at least 65 times independently for crops (~200 plant species), and 15 times in farmer lineages (~37 ant taxa) in the Neotropics and Asia/Australasia. Because of their high evolutionary replication, and variation in partner dependence, these systems are powerful models to unveil the steps in the evolution and ecology of insect agriculture.",

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note = "Funding Information: We thank three anonymous reviewers as well as the editor Susanne Brink for helpful comments on the manuscript and Emma Hindhaugh for the drawings shown in Figure 1 , and J{\'e}r{\^o}me Orivel, Milan Janda, and Florian Menzel for discussion, and G{\"u}nter Gerlach, Jer{\^o}me Orivel, Milan Janda, and Beno{\^i}t Chomicki for photos used in Figure 2 , and Marjorie G. Weber for the R code used to produce the phylogenetic tree seen in Figure 2 B. L.C.E.C. is funded by a UK Natural Environment Research Council doctoral training scholarship ( NE/S00743/1 ). E.T.K. is funded with the support of the Ammodo Science Award 2019 for Natural Sciences, an NWO VICI fellowship. G.C. is funded by a UK Natural Environment Research Council Independent Research Fellowship ( NE/S014470/1 ) and an ERC/UKRI frontier research grant ( EP/X026868/1 ). Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2022 The Author(s)",

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N2 - Outside humans, true agriculture was previously thought to be restricted to social insects farming fungus. However, obligate farming of plants by ants was recently discovered in Fiji, prompting a re-examination of plant cultivation by ants. Here, we generate a database of plant cultivation by ants, identify three main types, and show that these interactions evolved primarily for shelter rather than food. We find that plant cultivation evolved at least 65 times independently for crops (~200 plant species), and 15 times in farmer lineages (~37 ant taxa) in the Neotropics and Asia/Australasia. Because of their high evolutionary replication, and variation in partner dependence, these systems are powerful models to unveil the steps in the evolution and ecology of insect agriculture.

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The evolution of plant cultivation by ants

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

UN SDGs

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