From the article:
Ant-attended aphids are known to excrete high-quality honeydew when ants are present. Ant attendance has a negative effect on the growth and reproduction of the attended aphids. Therefore, trade-offs should occur between the quality of honeydew and the growth and fecundity of aphid individuals. Thus, if attending ants prefer the morph excreting a high-quality honeydew, such trade-offs and resulting competitive interactions are expected between the color morphs in M. yomogicola. The morph excreting high-quality honeydew is known to have a lower reproductive rate than the other morphs[9,10]. This fact implies that if the attending ants prefer one morph, this morph is expected to excrete high-quality honeydew. Note that any such difference between morphs leads to the exclusion of the inferior morphs. Surprisingly, nearly all colonies consist of both green and red morphs in the field.
There are also some ants that farm certain types of fungus! It’s really cool.
Yeah but not to eat the fungus right? They eat what eats the fungus? Can’t remember the rest of this factoid.
They feed the fungus leaves, which then provides the ants with honeydew in turn.
Iirc the fungus even excretes certain pheromones telling the ants what type of leaves to get.
Yeah that’s it. I knew they farmers the fungus but couldn’t remember if they ate it directly.
Thx!
I knew about aphid farming, but not that. Cool!