Devil's garden

For other uses, see Devil's Garden (disambiguation).

In myrmecology and forest ecology, a devil's garden (Kichwa: Supay chakra[1][2]) is a large stand of trees in the Amazon rainforest consisting of at most three tree species and the ant Myrmelachista schumanni.[2] Devil's gardens can reach sizes of up to 600 trees and are inhabited by a single ant colony, containing up to 3 million workers and 15,000 queens.[1][3] In a 2002 to 2004 census of the Amazon, devil's gardens were shown to have grown by 0.7% per year.[4] The relationship between tree and ant may persist for more than 800 years.[3][4] A devil's garden is considered an example of mutualism, a type of symbiotic relationship between species.

  1. ^ a b Frederickson, M. E., & Gordon, D. (2007). The devil to pay: the cost of mutualism with Myrmelachista schumanni ants in 'devil's gardens' is increased herbivory on Duroia hirsuta trees. Proc. R. Soc. B. 274 (1613): 1117-23.
  2. ^ a b David P. Edwards, Megan E. Frederickson, Glenn H. Shepard, and Douglas W. Yu (2009): A Plant Needs Ants like a Dog Needs Fleas: Myrmelachista schumanni Ants Gall Many Tree Species to Create Housing. Archived 2018-05-01 at the Wayback Machine The American Naturalist 174, no. 5: pp. 734-740.
  3. ^ a b Frederickson, M. E., Greene, M. J., & Gordon, D. (2005). Ecology: 'Devil's gardens' bedevilled by ants. Nature 437: 495-6.
  4. ^ a b Shwartz, Mark (2005-09-26). "Ants, not evil spirits, create poisonous devil's gardens in the Amazon rainforest". Stanford University. Retrieved 2019-12-03.