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Ants and plants may cooperate-and-radiate, but this study reveals mutualism actually slows ant diversification. Rapidly diversifying ant lineages first evolved, then engaged in plant mutualisms, which subsequently decreased their diversification rates.

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Area of Science:

  • Ecology
  • Evolutionary Biology
  • Biogeography

Background:

  • Mutualisms can act as key innovations, potentially accelerating the diversification of interacting lineages.
  • Previous research indicates plant diversification increases with ant mutualists, but reciprocal effects in ants remain unclear.

Purpose of the Study:

  • To investigate whether ant-plant mutualisms accelerate diversification in ant lineages.
  • To determine if ants and plants exhibit a
  • cooperate-and-radiate
  • dynamic.

Main Methods:

  • A novel text-mining approach identified ant species involved in plant defensive or seed dispersal mutualisms.
  • Diversification patterns in ants were analyzed using phylogenetic comparative methods, including BiSSE, BAMM, and Hidden State Speciation and Extinction (HiSSE) models.

Main Results:

  • Initial analyses using BiSSE and BAMM suggested elevated diversification rates in mutualistic ants.
  • The best-fitting model was HiSSE, indicating that unmeasured traits influence diversification.
  • The HiSSE model revealed that mutualism decreases diversification, as it evolved in already rapidly diversifying lineages and subsequently slowed their rates.

Conclusions:

  • Ant-plant mutualism does not appear to accelerate ant diversification.
  • Ant lineages likely radiated first, and then engaged in mutualistic relationships with plants, which subsequently constrained their diversification.