The ant acacia is a small, thorny tree found in different parts of Costa Rica. It is famous, not for its impressive thorns or its ability to thrive in harsh environmental conditions, but because of ...

Ants in your pants? That's nothing compared with ants up your snout. And that's what elephants in the African savanna must contend with when trying to snag a meal from a certain type of acacia tree.

In the 1960s, Penn biologist Dan Janzen, as part of earning his Ph.D., re-described what has become a classic example of biological mutualism: the obligate relationship between acacia-ants and ...

A tiny invasive ant muscled into a Kenyan savannah and sparked such a dramatic transformation in the landscape that even the local lions changed the way they hunt, according to research published ...

Feb. 15 (UPI) --Acacia ants have an exceptional sense of vibration. As a new study revealed, the ants, which live in and on Africa's acacia trees, can tell the difference between the vibrational ...

If animals and plants can’t defend themselves, they often form partnerships with bodyguards. Wasps use zombified caterpillars. Corals recruit goby fish. And acacia trees hire ants. The ants defend the ...

Acacia trees are a prominent feature of the East African savannah. They're also a classic example of the long-standing and complex relationships between plants and insects, in this case acacia ants.

GAINESVILLE, Fla., March 18 (UPI) --Africa's acacia ants, Crematogaster mimosae, use their powerful, painful bite to defend their trees from leaf-munchers like elephants and giraffes. They also have ...

A new study explores a disruptive force in the delicate African ecosystem that holds consequences for even top predators like lions. The big-headed ant, first recorded on the island of Mauritius, has ...

In Africa and in the tropics, armies of tiny creatures make the twisting stems of acacia plants their homes. Aggressive, stinging ants feed on the sugary nectar the plant provides and live in nests ...

Researchers find that the ants of the acacia tree are tipped off to the presence of herbivores by vibrations that run throughout the trees when an animal gets too close or begins to chew. As a result, ...

Ant-acacia plants attract ants by offering specialized food and hollow thorns in which the ants live, while the ant colony in turn defends its acacia against herbivores. This mutualistic relationship ...