MSGID: 1:317/3 6427b37c   
   PID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
   TID: hpt/lnx 1.9.0-cur 2019-01-08   
    Ants took over the world by following flowering plants out of   
   prehistoric forests    
      
     Date:   
         March 31, 2023   
     Source:   
         Field Museum   
     Summary:   
         Today, ants are pretty much everywhere. To learn more about how   
         these insects conquered the world, scientists used a combination of   
         fossils, DNA, and data on the habitat preferences of modern species   
         to piece together how ants and plants have been evolving together   
         over the past 60 million years. They found that when flowering   
         plants spread out from forests, the ants followed, kicking off   
         the evolution of the thousands of ant species alive today.   
      
      
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   FULL STORY   
   ==========================================================================   
   Ants are pretty much everywhere. There are more than 14,000 different   
   species, spread over every continent except Antarctica, and researchers   
   have estimated that there are more than four quadrillion individual   
   ants on Earth -- that's 4,000,000,000,000,000. But how ants evolved to   
   take over the world is still a mystery. In a new study in the journal   
   Evolution Letters, scientists used a combination of fossils, DNA, and   
   data on the habitat preferences of modern species to piece together how   
   ants and plants have been evolving together over the past 60 million   
   years. They found that when flowering plants spread out from forests,   
   the ants followed, kicking off the evolution of the thousands of ant   
   species alive today.   
      
      
   ==========================================================================   
   "When you look around the world today, you can see ants on nearly every   
   continent occupying all these different habitats, and even different   
   dimensions of those habitats -- some ants live underground, some live in   
   the canopies of trees. We're trying to understand how they were able to   
   diversify from a single common ancestor to occupy all these different   
   spaces," says Matthew Nelsen, a research scientist at the Field Museum   
   in Chicago and lead author of the paper.   
      
   Scientists already knew that ants and flowering plants, or angiosperms,   
   both originated around 140 million years ago and subsequently became more   
   prevalent and spread to new habitats. Nelsen and his colleagues wanted   
   to find evidence that the two groups' evolutionary paths were linked.   
      
   To find that link, Nelsen and his co-authors (Corrie Moreau at Cornell   
   University, Kevin Boyce at Stanford University, and Richard Ree at   
   the Field Museum) compared the climates that 1,400 modern ant species   
   inhabit, including data on temperature and precipitation. They coupled   
   this information with a time-scaled reconstruction of the ant family tree,   
   based on genetic information and ant fossils preserved in amber. Many   
   ant behaviors, like where they build their nests and what habitats they   
   live in, appear to be deeply ingrained in their species' lineages, to   
   the point that scientists are able to make pretty good guesses about   
   prehistoric ants' lives based on their modern relatives.   
      
   These data, when paired with similar information about plants, helped   
   bring the early ants' world into focus.   
      
   About 60 million years ago, ants lived primarily in forests and built   
   their nests underground. "Around this time, some of the plants in these   
   forests evolved to exhale more water vapor out through tiny holes in their   
   leaves - - they made the whole place a lot wetter, so the environment   
   became more like a rainforest," says Nelsen. In this wetter environment,   
   some of the ants began moving their nests out from underground and up into   
   the trees. (They weren't the only ones moving to the trees, either --   
   frogs, snakes, and epiphytic plants, similar to the bromeliads and air   
   plants we have today, also took to the trees around this time, helping   
   create new arboreal communities.)  Some of the flowering plants living   
   in these forests began to spread outward, inching their way into more   
   arid regions and adapting to thrive in drier conditions. Nelsen and his   
   colleagues' work suggests that when flowering plants left the forests,   
   some of the ants followed. The plants may have provided an incentive for   
   the ants in the form of food. "Other scientists have shown that plants   
   in these arid habitats were evolving ways of making food for ants - -   
   including things like elaiosomes, which are like fleshy appendages on the   
   seeds," says Nelsen. And when ants take the seeds to get the elaiosomes,   
   they help disperse them: a win for the parent plants.   
      
   The researchers say that by showing how plants helped shape the evolution   
   and spread of ants is especially important in light of the climate and   
   biodiversity crises we're facing.   
      
   "This study shows the important role that plants play in shaping   
   ecosystems," says Nelsen. "Shifts in plant communities -- such as those   
   we are seeing as a consequence of historic and modern climate change   
   -- can cascade and impact the animals and other organisms relying on   
   these plants."   
       * RELATED_TOPICS   
             o Plants_&_Animals   
                   # Endangered_Plants # Nature #   
                   Insects_(including_Butterflies)   
             o Earth_&_Climate   
                   # Forest # Rainforests # Grassland   
             o Fossils_&_Ruins   
                   # Evolution # Fossils # Origin_of_Life   
       * RELATED_TERMS   
             o Fire_ant o Flowering_plant o Bee o Fossil o Ant o   
             Timeline_of_evolution o The_evolution_of_human_intelligence   
             o Invasive_species   
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Story Source: Materials provided by Field_Museum. Note: Content may be   
   edited for style and length.   
      
      
   ==========================================================================   
   Journal Reference:   
      1. Matthew P Nelsen, Corrie S Moreau, C Kevin Boyce, Richard H Ree.   
      
         Macroecological diversification of ants is linked to angiosperm   
         evolution. Evolution Letters, 2023; DOI: 10.1093/evlett/qrad008   
   ==========================================================================   
      
   Link to news story:   
   https://www.sciencedaily.com/releases/2023/03/230331120653.htm   
      
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