Tropical trees built homes for ants. Wasps are taking them over
Researchers in Malaysian Borneo have discovered that predatory wasps are displacing ants in specialized hollow stems of Macaranga pearsonii trees. This shift is particularly prevalent in human-altered environments like oil palm plantations, disrupting a 10-million-year-old ecological partnership.
Why it matters
This disruption highlights how human land use can fundamentally alter ancient, stable ecological relationships, potentially threatening biodiversity and plant health.
Scientists studying the tropical forests of Malaysian Borneo have discovered an unexpected shift in one of the region's long-running ecological partnerships. An international team from Queen Mary University of London, the Royal Botanic Gardens, Kew, the Biology Center of the Czech Academy of Sciences, and other institutions found that predatory wasps are increasingly occupying the hollow stems of the tropical plant Macaranga pearsonii .
The findings, published in PeerJ , reveal that the wasps are moving into structures that evolved specifically to shelter protective ant colonies.
For at least 10 million years, these "ant-plants" have maintained a close partnership with ants. The plants produce hollow chambers where ants can live and also supply them with nutritious food bodies. In exchange, the ants aggressively protect their host plants from leaf-eating insects such as caterpillars.
Now, researchers have found evidence that this ancient relationship is being disrupted.
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