Ants can be found in huge numbers in almost every region and habitat in the world. But how did they become the most abundant and highly diverse insect species on earth? Scientists may have an answer, but it has to do with plants. increase.
About 60 million years ago, ants were forest dwellers, nesting primarily underground. But modern ants have diversified into more than 14,000 species, some of which now live in savannas, grasslands and deserts. In fact, ants are found on every continent except Antarctica.
Previous studies have demonstrated that the diversification of ants coincided with the rise of angiosperms (flowering and fruit-seeding plants). However, it is not clear what role flowering plants played in the evolution of ants, and how the present-day ant population came to be estimated at over 4,000 trillion he.
Now, researchers at the Field Museum in Chicago, as well as Cornell and Stanford Universities, have examined fossil, DNA, and climate data to discover how ants and plants are evolutionarily related.
“Today, if you look around the world, you can see that on almost every continent ants occupy different habitats and even in different dimensions of those habitats. Some live in tree canopies,” said Matthew Nelsen. Study author. “We’re trying to understand how they were able to diversify from a single common ancestor into all these different spaces.”
To model ant evolution, researchers compared the climates inhabited by 1,435 living ant species and reconstructed ant genealogies over time based on genetic information and ant fossils preserved in amber. Did. They obtained similar information on plants and compared the two.
The finding suggests that most early ants lived in forests from the Middle to Late Paleogene (66 to 23 million years ago) to the early Neogene (23 to present). suggests that It was around this time that they began to diversify under the influence of the evolution of forest plants.
“Around this time, some of the plants in these forests evolved to exhale more water vapor through tiny holes in their leaves. ‘ said Nelsen.
To escape the dampness, some ants have moved their nests from underground to trees. The researchers suggest that as forest angiosperms slowly spread outward to populate more open, drier areas, some ants followed suit. It’s probably because they were chasing their own stomachs, the researchers said.
“Other scientists have shown that these dry habitat plants have evolved ways to make food for ants, including elaiosomes, which are like fleshy appendages to seeds. It includes things like,” Nelsen said.
A mutually beneficial relationship was forged. Ants enjoyed the food provided by the plant’s seeds, and those who ate the seeds ensured that the plant would spread further.
The findings add to our understanding of how the evolution of ants coincided with, and was made possible by, the evolution of flowering plants that began millions of years ago.
“This study demonstrates the important role that plants play in shaping ecosystems,” said Nelsen. “Changes in plant communities, such as we see as a result of historical and contemporary climate change, can cascade and affect animals and other organisms that depend on these plants. .”
The study was published in a journal evolution characters.
Source: Field Museum
