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Science 9 May 2003:
Vol. 300. no. 5621, pp. 969 - 972
DOI: 10.1126/science.1082074
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Reports

Explaining the Abundance of Ants in Lowland Tropical Rainforest Canopies

Diane W. Davidson,1* Steven C. Cook,1 Roy R. Snelling,2 Tock H. Chua3{dagger}

The extraordinary abundance of ants in tropical rainforest canopies has led to speculation that numerous arboreal ant taxa feed principally as "herbivores" of plant and insect exudates. Based on nitrogen (N) isotope ratios of plants, known herbivores, arthropod predators, and ants from Amazonia and Borneo, we find that many arboreal ant species obtain little N through predation and scavenging. Microsymbionts of ants and their hemipteran trophobionts might play key roles in the nutrition of taxa specializing on N-poor exudates. For plants, the combined costs of biotic defenses and herbivory by ants and tended Hemiptera are substantial, and forest losses to insect herbivores vastly exceed current estimates.

1 Department of Biology, University of Utah, 257 South, 1400 East, Salt Lake City, UT, 84112–0840, USA.
2 Entomology Section, Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, 900 Exposition Boulevard, Los Angeles, CA 90007, USA.
3 Department of Biology, Universiti Brunei Darussalam, Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei Darussalam.



{dagger} Present address: Department of Biotechnology, Asian Institute of Medicine, Science and Technology, 2 Persiaran Cempaka, Amanjaya, Sungai Petani, Kedah Darul Aman, Malaysia.

* To whom correspondence should be addressed.

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