Pheidologeton diversus ants and, I presume, other species in the genus, often carry seeds of many types along their trails and columns. Some of these seeds are quite large (< 20 mg, possibly more). The columns can be 10s of meters long. What happens to these seeds in the end? Are they eaten? buried? discarded where they can germinate? If they don't eat them, why do they carry them?
The answer to your question in short is yes. Please have a look at this link.
http://www.biologie.uni-ulm.de/antnet/pdf/pfeiffer-2004.pdf
Interesting, Arvind! But in this paper they are moving arillate seeds less than a meter, then removing the aril and discarding the seeds. The columns I was referring to cover 10s of meters and they carry seeds of many types, mostly without arils. I've seen trails crossing open land between forest patches. Do these seeds also survive?
Thank you, Elia, for all these. In the ones I can easily access, it is still not clear if they destroy natural seeds - milled rice is cheating! - but it does seem likely. C. diversus , at least, is surely primarily carnivorous, since it specializes in group transport of large invertebrates like earthworms and centipedes, and animal prey usually outnumbers seeds on their trunk trails.
I agree, but I would like to see some proof! It would then be interesting to find out if any seeds escape, by being lost during transport, or too tough or too toxic. Every seed of any type that ends up on the soil surface must encounter an ant at some stage, yet we seem to know very little about how they interact. See my other question on Pheidole...
Article An update the world survey of myrmecochorous dispersal distances
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