A carnivorous fly larva uses tree sugar as bait to devour ants

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A carnivorous fly larva uses tree sugar as bait to devour ants





A carnivorous fly larva uses tree sugar as bait to devour ants


In the Cerrado, the name of the biome that identifies the Brazilian savanna, there are many species of trees and shrubs with sugar glands designed to attract ants. These glands, called extrafloral nectaries, produce drops of sugar that the ants suck.



"By doing so, the ants end up defending the leaves of these plants against the attack of other insects such as caterpillars, for example. All this is very common. What is surprising is to see an insect taking advantage of the mutualism between plants and ants to hunt ants. It's what a small carnivorous fly does, "said Paulo Sergio Oliveira, an ecology professor at the Department of Animal Biology at the University of Campinas (Unicamp) in Brazil.



The fly to which Oliveira refers belongs to the family of the drosophila. While studying the mutualisms of the ants between 2008 and 2013, the biologist Mayra Cadorin Vidal, under the direction of Oliveira and during her masters, visited with other colleagues a private reserve of the Cerrado located within a farm located in the region of Itirapina, a municipality of the state of São Paulo, in Brazil.



There the researchers detected the presence of small insect larvae in some extrafloral nectaries of a very common tree in the Cerrado, called pau-terra (Qualea grandiflora). The larvae - which fed on ants - were of an unknown species of fruit fly.



Vidal ended by describing the "larva that eats ants", as the scientists called it, in 2015, in Annals of the Entomological Society of America. And the species was given the name of Rhinoleucophenga myrmecophaga, from the Greek myrmex (ant) and phaga (eat), that is, it eats ants.







Scientists describe this strategy, unknown until now, that they use the larvae of a small species of fly to eat ants in plants of the Brazilian savanna. (Photo: DICYT)



In a new work published last July in the journal Environmental Entomology, Vidal describes the method applied by the larvae of R. myrmecophaga to devour ants of the genus Camponotus, popularly known as carpenter or wood ants.



The researchers observed that the adult females of the mosquito deposited isolated eggs next to the nectaries where the larvae would hatch later.



"We started to investigate how the presence of these larvae could have effects on the mutualism between ants and plants. At first, we thought that the larvae were blocking the access of the ants to the resources exchanged through mutualism. However, we later realized that the ants were prey in the larval shelters, "said Vidal, who is currently working at Syracuse University in New York.



What the biologist witnessed and now describes is a strategy of unprecedented predation.
"This exploitation of a mutualism of the ants is peculiar because it is the first known case of an agent that takes advantage of the resources provided by a partner of mutualism to attract and eat another member of the same," he said.



This work was supported by the Support Foundation for Scientific Research of the State of São Paulo - FAPESP within the framework of its Research Program on Characterization, Conservation, Restoration and Sustainable Use of Biodiversity (BIOTA-FAPESP).



In the Cerrado, during the dry winter months, the branches of the pau-terra are totally devoid of leaves. And during the summer, when it rains, this tree appears full of green leaves. It is then when the ants of the genus Camponotusexhibit their relationship of mutualism with the trees and shrubs of this species.



Only during the summer this plant offers insects the sugar drops made in the extrafloral nectaries. In return, the pau-terra takes advantage of the aggressiveness of the legions of ants that patrol their branches and branches and that attack the caterpillars, the beetles, the aphids or the bugs that dare to eat their leaves.



But the carnivorous fly intrudes on that relationship. In the course of its evolution, the larvae of R. myrmecophaga ended up adapting to make use of the mutualism existing between the pau-terra and the ants and to prey on them.



"When the eggs hatch, the larvae rise above the sugar glands and build shelters there where they will develop until adulthood, when they will have transformed into flies. But it happens that the shelters are not only the places of larval development but also traps to catch ants. Inside them, the larvae are always on the lookout, "said Vidal.



The researcher comments that the refuge of the larva has a hole through which it instills a droplet of the nectar of the gland of the plant. It is the bait. The larva is located exactly in the center of the shelter, which is extremely sticky.



When the ant arrives to extract the nectar, it is stuck there. When struggling to try to escape, the ant ends up dying of exhaustion. And that is when the larva uses two hooks that it has in its mouth to open the exoskeleton of the ant and devour it.



"The larva eats the ant inside. We found several examples of empty exoskeletons that remained stuck in the shelters of the larvae. In a few cases, the larvae had also devoured wasps, beetles and flies, "said Vidal.



The biologist comments that it is a very common infestation in the Cerrado and that 85% of the plants observed in the study were infested with R. myrmecophaga larvae. Each plant had an average of five larvae.



Oliveira emphasizes that it is a rare case. "Very few bugs are adapted to eat ants, because they are aggressive: they sting, they throw acid and they are social insects, that is to say that where there is one, there are always many others. And all will unite to fight a common enemy to kill and cut it to serve as food inside the anthill, "he said.



In another study published in 2016 in Ecology, Vidal analyzed the effect of the presence of R. myrmecophaga in the trees of the pau-terra species. And he observed that the trees on which the ants spent less time were those that suffered major damage, since they were less protected against herbivores.



Vidal suspects that there may be other unknown examples of that form of ant predation on Cerrado plants.



"As the Cerrado is rich in ants and the plants that contain sugar glands are abundant, the ants visit them constantly to feed on their secretions. It may be that other specialized ant eaters are discovered, "said the researcher. (Source: AGENCIA FAPESP / DICYT)

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