Talk:Allomerus decemarticulatus

Untitled
It sounds to me like the ants have about as much a symbiotic relationship with the hairy plant and the fungus as we have with trees and cows (if we were to make a wood-and-leather trap for something)

Improvements and Response to Untitled
So I just made some improvements to the page, with more material and more sources. Also, in response to the earlier comment, the ants' relationship with the fungus may be more similar to the human relationship with trees and cows you talked about, but the plant actually shows many modified physical characteristics that seem to be specialized to support ant colonies. So the ants are not just harvesting the fungus and plant hairs to use as a trap, but the plant species has coevolved with the ant species to allow the ants to make the best traps, because this not only maximizes the predatory ability of the ant, it also maximizes protection from herbivores for the plant. In the human relationship, we are only really using pre-existing materials (wood and leather). Riceowl2014 (talk) 20:14, 26 April 2011 (UTC)