ArticleProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America2018
Ant-plant interactions evolved through increasing interdependence.
Article in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America, 2018. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 38 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
38 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Limits on the capacity of an ectotherm to buffer temperature extremes through the construction of a central refuge.Oecologia · 2026Article
- The predatory behavior of ants: an impressive panoply of morphological adaptations.Insect science · 2026Review
- Extrafloral Nectaries in Woody Plants: Toward an Integrated Framework for Ant-Mediated Plant Defense.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2026Review
- Vulnerability of Myrmecochory to Anthropogenic Disturbances and Climate Change: An Ecological Synthesis.Insects · 2026Review
- Conflict in ant phylogeny results from complex interaction between multiple evolutionary signals and tree reconstruction artifacts.Molecular biology and evolution · 2026Article
- Microclimatic and Anthropogenic Drivers of Insect Biodiversity in Rubber-Based Agroforestry Systems.Insects · 2026Article
- Evaluating UCE Data Adequacy and Integrating Uncertainty in a Comprehensive Phylogeny of Ants.Systematic biology · 2025Article
- Phylogenomics Resolve the Systematics and Biogeography of the Ant Tribe Myrmicini and Tribal Relationships within the Hyperdiverse Ant Subfamily Myrmicinae.Systematic biology · 2025Article
- Dietary niche shapes bacterial community in Indo-Pacific ants.Microbiology spectrum · 2025Article
- Foraging by predatory ants: A review.Insect science · 2025Review
- Social control drove ant evolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2025Article
- Review
- Ecological change and conflict reduction led to a social circulatory system in ants.Communications biology · 2025Article
- Comprehensive characterization and phylogenetic analysis of the complete plastomes of two ant-orchids, Caularthron bicornutum and Myrmecophila thomsoniana.BMC plant biology · 2024Article
- Long-term strict ant-plant mutualism identity characterises growth rate and leaf shearing resistance of an Amazonian myrmecophyte.Scientific reports · 2024Article
- Global biogeographic regions for ants have complex relationships with those for plants and tetrapods.Nature communications · 2024Article
- Evolutionary déjà vu? A case of convergent evolution in an ant-plant association.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Reply to Vermeij: Challenges and opportunities in macroevolution.Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America · 2024Article
- Unravelling the Homology between Calycine Glands in Malpighiales: New Data from Basal Malpighiaceae.Plants (Basel, Switzerland) · 2024Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Ant-plant interactions are diverse and abundant and include classic models in the study of mutualism and other biotic interactions. By estimating a time-scaled phylogeny of more than 1,700 ant species and a time-scaled phylogeny of more than 10,000 plant genera, we infer when and how interactions between ants and plants evolved and assess their macroevolutionary consequences. We estimate that ant-plant interactions originated in the Mesozoic, when predatory, ground-inhabiting ants first began foraging arboreally. This served as an evolutionary precursor to the use of plant-derived food sources, a dietary transition that likely preceded the evolution of extrafloral nectaries and elaiosomes. Transitions to a strict, plant-derived diet occurred in the Cenozoic, and optimal models of shifts between strict predation and herbivory include omnivory as an intermediate step. Arboreal nesting largely evolved from arboreally foraging lineages relying on a partially or entirely plant-based diet, and was initiated in the Mesozoic, preceding the evolution of domatia. Previous work has suggested enhanced diversification in plants with specialized ant-associated traits, but it appears that for ants, living and feeding on plants does not affect ant diversification. Together, the evidence suggests that ants and plants increasingly relied on one another and incrementally evolved more intricate associations with different macroevolutionary consequences as angiosperms increased their ecological dominance.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.