The Effect of Predation on Ant-aphid Mutualism in <i>Ligusticum porteri</i>
Abstract
Predation and mutualism take up a large part of interactions within communities. These multi-trophic level interactions affect the makeup of the community. We explored how predation impacts the strength of mutualism between ants and aphids on the plant Ligusticum porteri. It has been a base assumption that ants mediate the effect of predation on aphids. We manipulated half of the plants by adding lygus bugs and measured ant density of each site. Through this study, it was discovered the presence of predators broke down the mutualism and disrupted it from forming (P < 0.0056). Ant density had no correlation to the efficiency of the mutualism forming or the strength of it (P = 0.360). Larger aphid colonies did attract more ants, and the larger the number of ants resulted in greater services for the aphids (P < 0.0056). Higher ant abundance resulted in a greater growth rate for aphid colonies. The predation impacts the mutualism potentially affecting aphid, ant and lygus abundance, as well as revealing how ants mediate the effect of predation.
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References (11)
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