One of the university as proved that an ant is useful in protecting the fertilization of the plant. Different spices of ants they live on N tropical areas and mainly found in tree crowns. They also found on bushes, different trees and even on coffee trees. Each tree can have up to 60,000 ants. A leaf cutter ant is also present and they live in partnership with fungus and both depend on each other for their development.
Ant fecal matter and urea consists of amino acid droplets serve as a valuable fertilizer for plants, absorbed directly by the leaves. Even we have seen that ants wandering on plants and even on tall trees. The fact is that the plant itself attracts the ants by secreting sugars containing nectar on the leaves and on the body of the plant.
Some of the researchers as observed that the trees had a higher content of nitrogen than the trees to which the ants did not have contact. The trees visited by the ants also had larger crowns than the trees without ants.
They proved by placing all the coffee trees in water, so the ants could not move from tree to tree unless there was a bridge to take them across. Accordingly, the researchers built suspension bridges between some, but not all, of the trees. “For the first time, we saw that nutrients from ant waste are taken up by the leaves and transported to other parts in the tree”. Some of the ants protect the developing seeds from seed predators and also it protects treehoppers.
The nutritional supplement to the leaves can be a great advantage for many different plants. And also we know that globally there are lots of plants inhabited by ants. The nutritional supplement for their leaves can have a major ecological significance and may also have been decisive for the evolution of ant-plant interactions”.