Edredones

sciencecenter:

With a name like Devil’s Garden, you know the science has to be cool

A Devil’s Garden is a forest clearing filled with a monoculture of low-lying plants, carefully curated by ants. The ants enter into symbiosis with the shrubs. In return for providing shelter for the ant colonies, the lone plant species in the Devil’s Garden receives the best maintenance that a few million ants can provide. The ants attack any other herbivores, and inject formic acid into competing saplings. They drive off all of the other plants until only the ant’s preferred plant species remains. Since queen ants are continuously replaced, Devil’s Gardens can exist almost indefinitely. One garden in Peru is suspected over being over 800 years old.