The ants' impact extends beyond lions, for instance, to endangered black rhinos, which have relied on the now-dwindling acacia trees for food, Goheen, at the University of Wyoming, says.

The invading insects kill local acacia ants wherever they find them. And other studies have shown that without defending ants, pachyderms tore down the thorn trees five to seven times more often.

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 ...

It all starts with the whistling-thorn acacia trees in the plains of Laikipia, Kenya. Their study, published in the journal Science, found that the big-headed ants had led to a threefold decline ...

The impact of climate change on invasive species and ecosystems 08:24. A tiny invasive ant muscled into a Kenyan savannah and sparked such a dramatic transformation in the landscape that even the ...

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 ...

Citations. R. Cortés-Romay and S.A. Vargas. Horse-hair fungus used in bird nests alters the behaviour of acacia ants.Animal Behaviour. Vol. 216, October 2024, p.

Ant Acacia + Birds. While it’s smart for many species, Homo spaniens included, to try to avoid interacting with ant acacia trees, some species of birds seek them out. They see a thorny tree covered in ...

There are more than 20,000 species of ants, including such noticables as picnic ants, sidewalk ants, ... Once upon a time, they were all classified in the genus Acacia, ...

Big-headed ants, an aggressive and predatory invasive species, are destabilizing that foundation by displacing the native acacia ants. When big-headed ants come to an acacia ant nest, they wreak ...

First, the big-headed ants outcompete native acacia ants in the genus Crematogaster. These ants have developed a close partnership with the whistling-thorn tree ( Vachellia drepanolobium ), a ...