Professor Robert Warren finds identical ant-attracting mechanisms across plants, wasps and stick insects
Updated
Updated · VINNews · May 4
Professor Robert Warren finds identical ant-attracting mechanisms across plants, wasps and stick insects
9 articles · Updated · VINNews · May 4
In The American Naturalist, Warren's SUNY Buffalo State team reported matching fatty acids, handle-like attachments and breakaway seams in wildflower seeds, red oak wasp galls and stick insect eggs.
Experiments found ants carried wasp galls as readily as seeds, but largely ignored galls after their cap-like kapéllo was removed, showing the attachment drives transport into nests.
The study highlights convergent evolution in unrelated species using ants for dispersal or protection, and identifies lauric, palmitic, oleic and stearic acids as the shared chemical signals.
How does a wasp force an oak tree to perfectly mimic a wildflower seed for ants?
Is this intricate natural deception proof of evolution's power or evidence of a master designer?
What other complex secret partnerships, hidden for centuries, might be shaping the world around us?