Journal
COMPTES RENDUS BIOLOGIES
Volume 336, Issue 10, Pages 500-504Publisher
ELSEVIER FRANCE-EDITIONS SCIENTIFIQUES MEDICALES ELSEVIER
DOI: 10.1016/j.crvi.2013.08.003
Keywords
Ant-plant interactions; Melissotarsus ants; Degradation of plant material; Enzymatic activity
Categories
Funding
- French Ministere des Affaires etrangeres (CORUS programme) [02 412 062]
Ask authors/readers for more resources
Melissotarsus ants have an extremely specialized set of behaviours. Both workers and gynes tunnel galleries in their host tree bark. Workers walk with their mesothoracic legs pointing upwards and tend Diaspididae hemiptera for their flesh. The ants use their forelegs to plug the galleries with silk that they secrete themselves. We hypothesised that the ants' energetic needs for nearly constant gallery digging could be satisfied through the absorption of host tree tissues; so, using basic techniques, we examined the digestive capacities of workers from two species. We show that workers are able to degrade oligosaccharides and heterosides as well as, to a lesser degree, polysaccharides. This is one of the rare reports on ants able to digest plant polysaccharides other than starch. (C) 2013 Academie des sciences. Published by Elsevier Masson SAS. All rights reserved.
Authors
I am an author on this paper
Click your name to claim this paper and add it to your profile.
Reviews
Recommended
No Data Available