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Ant’s choice: The effect of nutrients on a key ant–hemipteran mutualism

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Abstract

Soil fertility is understood to act in many indirect ways, in addition to directly providing nutrients to plants. Given that higher order indirect interactions frequently are key to understanding community structure, it would be natural to expect that indirect mutualisms should be as important as other interactions in generating such structure. Although mutualisms are ubiquitous in nature, exploring the myriad ways in which they interconnect with other elements of a system is less common. That soil fertility has an indirect effect on community structure is well known, suggests that soil fertility may be important in determining the effect of mutualisms on the structure of the ecological communities in which they are embedded. Here we report on a laboratory study that specifically examines the direct connection between the behavior of a mutualist and nutritional properties of the soil. We tested the effects of soil fertilization (high, medium and low levels) on the Azteca seriseasur–Coccus viridis mutualism on coffee plants in Mexico. We found that ants foraged significantly more on plants that were infected with C. viridis over control plants. Moreover, ants preferred to tend C. viridis on high fertilized over medium and low fertilized plants. This study highlights the importance of the links between soil nutrient properties and their effects on a key ant-hemipteran mutualism, illustrating the cascading effects on other interactions involving this keystone ant species.

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The data that supports the findings of this study are available in the supplementary material of this article.

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Acknowledgements

We are grateful to Peter Walters and Finca Irlanda for allowing us to conduct research on the farm as well as provide us with the coffee seedlings from the nursery. We would like to thank P. Yajnik for help with statistical analysis and K. Sanchez, Z. Hajian-Forooshani, I. Saraeny Rivera Salinas and N. Medina and two anonymous reviewers for helpful comments on earlier versions of the manuscript.

Funding

This study was funded by UM Rackham graduate student research Grant and UM ecology & Evolutionary Biology block grant, with support from the US National Science Foundation, DEB 1853261.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Biological Sciences Building, University of Michigan, 1105 N. University Ave, Ann Arbor, MI, 48109, USA

    Chatura Vaidya & John Vandermeer

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  1. Chatura Vaidya
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  2. John Vandermeer
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Contributions

C.V. conceived the study; C.V. and J.V. designed the study; C.V. collected the data; C.V. analyzed the data; C.V. wrote the manuscript; J.V. helped with editing the manuscript.

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Correspondence to Chatura Vaidya.

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The authors declare no conflict of interest. The funding sponsors had no role in the design of the study.

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Handling Editor: Heikki Hokkanen.

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Vaidya, C., Vandermeer, J. Ant’s choice: The effect of nutrients on a key ant–hemipteran mutualism. Arthropod-Plant Interactions 15, 545–550 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-021-09833-5

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11829-021-09833-5

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