These trees provided food and shelter for native acacia ants and in turn, the ants defended the trees against animals, like elephants, that would eat them. When elephants grabbed tree leaves ...

The savanna was a woodland with extensive groups of these trees, sometimes called acacias, which were the home of native acacia ants. Those tiny ants protected the trees from elephants ...

Ants known to defend certain species of Acacia trees from elephant predation deter the massive herbivores so effectively that they are impacting entire savanna ecosystems, according to a study ...

have been studying how acacia ants protect whistling thorn trees (SN: 6/15/10). When an elephant tries to eat the tree, “ants swarm up inside its nostrils and bite from the inside out,” Goheen ...

First, to confirm that big-headed ant invasions lead to more grazing by elephants and fewer acacia trees, they monitored three sets of four big experimental plots. Half the plots were in areas ...

Native acacia ants are killed by the smaller invasive big-headed ants, leaving whistling-thorn trees defenseless against elephants. Credit: Pat Milligan When people talk about the interconnectedness ...

But they can’t stop an elephant. That’s where the tree ... Riginos: I thought, okay, if these native acacia ants are getting killed off by the invasive big-headed ants, that has big potential ...

Big-headed ants kill native acacia ants, which protect trees from elephants and other herbivores in Kenya — one of a few African nations with a sizable lion population — by swarming into the ...

It all starts with the whistling-thorn acacia trees in the plains ... bite to discourage hungry elephants from devouring the trees. But the big-headed ant changed all that. Thought to have ...

Postdoctoral scholar Patrick Milligan recently published a paper that he started during his doctoral studies and is continuing during his National Science Foundation fellowship in Elizabeth Pringle’s ...