What Animals Eat Acacia Trees

Ants work with acacia trees to prevent elephant harm

Ants on acacia (Palmer) — Epitome explanation,
Symbiotic ants alive on and benefit from this acacia tree

A species of acacia tree plant in Eastern Africa seems to be protected from elephant damage - by the ants that live on it.

Researchers from the Universities of Wyoming and Florida, in the US, carried out a series of studies in Laikipia District in Primal Kenya, and Tsavo National Park, also in Republic of kenya.

Tree encompass was decreasing while elephant numbers were increasing. Tree cover stayed the aforementioned where elephants were excluded using a high electrical debate that other animals can cross.

Elephants are very effective at stripping copse' bark and destroying them while feeding. "The number of elephants in the fundamental highlands of Kenya has get high plenty in contempo years that we see severely elephant-damaged copse all over the place these days," said study author Todd Palmer.

The researchers were intrigued though when they noticed that tree comprehend had only decreased in areas with sandy soil - not those with clay soil.

Professor Palmer, together with Jake Goheen, who are publishing their results in the journal Current Biological science, noticed that on the clay soil there seemed to be only one kind of tree - an acacia called Acacia drepanolobium. In other areas with sandy soil, there was a much wider range of tree types.

An elephant browsing acacia wood in central Kenya

What is special about this blazon of tree is that it has a symbiotic relationship with ants. The plant provides shelter and nutrient for the ants, and it at present seems that the ants protect the plant from elephants.

In social club to observe out exactly what was putting the elephants off these trees, Professors Palmer and Goheen first tried stripping ants from the pismire plants.

Elephants then became interested in eating the trees, but the ants came back - the more than ants at that place were, the less elephants wanted to swallow the trees.

After this, they gave semi-wild elephants in a rehabilitation centre in Tsavo National Park four types of branches.

They tried the ant plant, both with and without ants, and another acacia plant, besides with and without ants. "The elephants wouldn't even bear on the branches with ants on - they could smell the ants and knew it would be painful to swallow them", says Professor Goheen.

The elephants seem to exist wary of getting bitten on the soft undersides of their trunks.

Other large herbivores, especially giraffes, will eat the plants, probably because they are not equally bothered past the ants. Nigel Raine, another ecologist from Purple Holloway, University of London, likewise studies these ant plants, and says that giraffes will go ahead and eat the leaves of the plants, although ants will then swarm onto their face up and oral cavity and try to seize with teeth them.

"Whenever you create a disturbance in the tree awning, the ants come up and investigate. As an ecologist, y'all end up with a lot of bites and stings," says Dr Raine.

Plants that are symbiotic with ants can be plant in other parts of the earth, especially Central and South America, where at that place are no elephants, simply large herbivores lived before they became extinct.

In fable elephants are agape of mice, but in reality they seem to exist more afraid of insects. Previous studies have found that elephants are not simply afraid of ants but likewise will run away from areas with bees, every bit soon equally they hear them buzzing.