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Facultative Ant‐Plant Interactions: Nectar Sugar Preferences of Introduced Pest Ant Species in South Florida 1
Author(s) -
Koptur Suzanne,
Truong Ni
Publication year - 1998
Publication title -
biotropica
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 0.813
H-Index - 96
eISSN - 1744-7429
pISSN - 0006-3606
DOI - 10.1111/j.1744-7429.1998.tb00053.x
Subject(s) - nectar , ant , sugar , biology , mutualism (biology) , hymenoptera , pest analysis , botany , aculeata , facultative , myrmecophyte , honeydew , sucrose , fructose , ecology , food science , pollen
We observed nectar use by native and exotic ant species in nature, garden, and urban situations, and found ants utilizing floral and extrafloral nectar of a variety of flowering plant species. We collected 31 plant nectars (29 floral, 2 extrafloral) and used them in feeding preference tests against standard solutions of sugars (20 percent fructose, glucose, and sucrose, and their mixture), 10 trials for each nectar‐ant comparison. We compared time‐to‐discovery and total ant visits to each droplet using ANOVA, and found that both trial and solution contributed significantly to the variation in most experiments. Seven of the floral nectars tested were significantly more attractive to certain ant species than the sugar solutions. Not only do ants use floral nectar, but it appears that some floral nectars contain compounds that are especially attractive to ants.