Devil's garden

In myrmecology and forest ecology, a devil's garden (Kichwa: Supay chakra) is a large stand of trees in the Amazon rainforest consisting of at most three tree species and the ant Myrmelachista schumanni. Devil's gardens can reach sizes of up to 600 trees and are inhabited by a single ant colony, containing up to 3 million workers and 15,000 queens. In a 2002 to 2004 census of the Amazon, devil's gardens were shown to have grown by 0.7% per year. The relationship between tree and ant may persist for more than 800 years. A devil's garden is considered an example of mutualism, a type of symbiotic relationship between species.

For other uses, see Devil's Garden (disambiguation).
This article is issued from Wikipedia. The text is licensed under Creative Commons - Attribution - Sharealike. Additional terms may apply for the media files.