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Acacia trees with parasitic ants have fewer and less spacious spines than trees with mutualistic ants

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Abstract

Obligate ant-defended plants provide food and shelter in exchange for protection against herbivores. Mesoamerican acacia trees have an obligate ant mutualism, but parasitic non-defending ants can also nest on the tree. We assessed whether rewards corresponded to ant defense within a plant species. As we expected, we found that parasite-inhabited trees had fewer swollen spines than ant-defended trees. Spine diameter was smaller in parasite-inhabited plants, but there were no differences in spine length, suggesting that spines serve as mechanical protection against herbivory. Parasite-inhabited plants may have reduced rewards because of plant differences when establishing, a plastic response to limited resources, or differential energy allocation when sensing the lack of defense.

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Data availability

The dataset generated during the current study is available in the Figshare repository: https://doi.org/10.6084/m9.figshare.9343469.

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Acknowledgments

We thank Dr. Oscar Rocha for facilitating our project; to the staff at the Palo Verde NP and OTS Palo Verde Biological Station, especially to Carlos Castro, for help with pictures. Comments from Mauricio Fernández and Armando Castillo greatly improved the manuscript. We thank Jack Longino for help identifying Crematogaster. Research was conducted under scientific permits M-P-SINAC-PNI-ACAT-053-2017 from the Republic of Costa Rica.

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Correspondence to Sabrina Amador-Vargas.

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The authors declare that they have no conflict of interest.

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Communicated by: Matthias Waltert

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Amador-Vargas, S., Dyer, J., Arnold, N. et al. Acacia trees with parasitic ants have fewer and less spacious spines than trees with mutualistic ants. Sci Nat 107, 3 (2020). https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-019-1647-4

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s00114-019-1647-4

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