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Updated: Feb 16, 2026
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Collection and Long-Term Maintenance of Leaf-Cutting Ants Atta in Laboratory Conditions
Published on: August 30, 2022
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Keystone mutualism strengthens top-down effects by recruiting large-bodied ants
Robert E Clark1, Michael S Singer2
1Biology Department, Wesleyan University, Middletown, CT, USA. rclark@wesleyan.edu.
Oecologia
|January 7, 2018
Summary
Mutualistic interactions between ants and sap-feeding insects can strengthen the ants' predatory impact on leaf-chewing herbivores. This occurs by favoring larger ant species, demonstrating how these relationships shape forest food webs.
Area of Science:
- Community ecology
- Food web dynamics
- Insect-plant interactions
Background:
- Understanding mutualistic interactions and predator diversity is crucial for community ecology.
- Predator community variation can mediate the strength of top-down effects in food webs.
Purpose of the Study:
- To examine how predator community variation influences top-down effects in the presence and absence of mutualisms.
- To investigate the impacts of predatory ants that interact with both herbivores and mutualists.
Main Methods:
- A 2-year study in Connecticut forests examining ant-herbivore-plant interactions.
- Investigated three mechanisms: increased ant abundance, increased abundance of stronger predators, and changes in predator diversity due to mutualisms.
- Experimental manipulation and observation of ant species, body size, and herbivory levels.
Main Results:
- Host plants with sap feeders favored large-bodied ant species (Camponotus).
- No significant changes in overall ant abundance or species richness were observed.
- Large-bodied ants effectively suppressed caterpillars and reduced leaf herbivory, aligning with body size-based predation predictions.
Conclusions:
- Ant-Hemiptera mutualisms can generate strong top-down effects on herbivores by increasing the prevalence of functionally important predators (large-bodied ants).
- The keystone predator status of certain ants can be contingent on their mutualistic relationships with sap-feeding Hemiptera.
- This highlights how mutualisms can reshape predator-prey dynamics and food web structures.
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