Protective Ant-Plant Interactions as Model Systems in Ecological and Evolutionary Research

▪ Abstract Protective ant-plant interactions, important in both temperate and tropical communities, are increasingly used to study a wide range of phenomena of general interest. As antiherbivore defenses “worn on the outside,” they pose fewer barriers to experimentation than do direct (e.g., chemical) plant defenses. This makes them tractable models to study resource allocation to defense and mechanisms regulating it. As multi-trophic level interactions varying in species specificity and impact on fitness of participants, ant-plant-herbivore associations figure prominently in studies of food-web structure and functioning. As horizontally transmitted mutualisms that are vulnerable to parasites and “cheaters,”…