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- Ant and aphid
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- Symbiosis of insects
Ants and aphids have a close relationship with each other. The former receive food from symbiosis, while the latter receive protection. Gardeners, when they want to remove pests from their plants, begin to fight aphids. When she disappears from the beds, those who like to feast on her juice also disappear.
Where does aphid live and what does it eat
The insect nature has cheated. It cannot defend itself against its natural enemies: ladybugs and ground beetles. The plant parasite does not have a shell, poison or powerful jaws. His short legs are not able to quickly jump and run. He has a small proboscis, which sucks juice from plants.
Aphids harm the flora as follows:
- It spreads a fungus that covers the leaves with sticky mucus and prevents the plant from growing normally.
- When sucking juice, the insect damages trees, bushes, and grass. Green leaves curl and stop developing.
Plants on which aphids appeared begin to wilt. They do not bloom, bear fruit, and cannot survive the winter.
On a note!
Not only aphids eat ants. Bees, birds, ticks, spiders prey on her.
The pest, in order to get the necessary elements from the juice, must drink it more than it can digest. Aphids remove excess fluid to the abdomen. They mix with its secretions and acquire a sugary taste. The fall attracts other insects, which become guards of the parasites.
How does an ant live?
Ants live as a family. In the anthill is uteruswhose purpose is to produce offspring. Males and females with wings, soldiers and working individuals can hatch from eggs. The purpose of the latter is to look after the nest and collect food for the entire colony. Relationship in an ant family built on a strict hierarchy.
Arthropods are sweet tooth. Therefore, they often rush to visit a person to feast on food waste. And in nature and in suburban areas, aphids are grown to feed on its sweet secretions.
On a note!
Summer residents often wonder which ants breed aphids. In garden plots, they are mainly engaged in breeding and milking black and yellow ants. In the forest, aphids are bred red look ant family.
To get a pad, ants milking aphids using antennae.
Symbiosis of insects
Where he gets his livelihood aphid, surely ant individuals will bustle about. From the outside it may seem that the workers act as shepherds, and the pests are their "cattle." Then a legitimate question arises, why do ants need aphids.
Interesting!
Arthropods use a plant pest as a food source. They drink a sweet pad and store it in their nests.
The symbiosis of aphids and ants is as follows:
- Ants guard their "herd" from enemies. They attack insects feeding on aphids.
- "Shepherds" control the number of "herds", eating the bred individuals.
- For the winter, workers transfer pests to the anthill so that they do not die from the cold.
Ants don't just drink paddy. They store it for a hungry and arid time. Juice is stored in brothers whose goiter is enlarged. These family members cannot leave anthill and serve as a reservoir for storing the elixir.
Arthropods zealously guard their source of food. If they have to move, they carry aphids with them to breed in a new place.
The type of relationship between ants and aphids is cooperation. The former protect and help multiply, while the latter provide food.
I have long noticed that it is worth to appear in the garden black ants, as the plant begins to attack aphids. Poison the first and second.
I hung wormwood leaves on the trees. I change the dried plant to fresh. No insect touches the trees.
And to me this wormwood "to the bulb." All the same, pests breed. Only poison saves.
Cool article. It was always interesting why ants scurry around aphids. It turns out they are drinking juice from her.
Thanks for the interesting stuff. Now I will be on the site to destroy aphids, not ants. As I understand it, it attracts many pests to the site with its juice.