
Ant species cultivates coffee for accommodation - arunc
http://www.dw.com/en/ant-species-cultivates-coffee-for-accommodation/a-36477533
======
TheSpiceIsLife
I'm surprised there isn't a mention of caffeine in the article linked here.

Caffeine is an insecticide, and I'm willing to bet it plays a role in this
relationship by providing ant housing that other insects find generally
unpalatable to be around.

This bit seems odd:

 _" This is the first ant to build its own home," says Susanne Renner, a
botanist from the Ludwig Maximilian University in Munich._

Surely this is a misquote or otherwise out of context, because it's obviously
not true.

~~~
liqu0rice
Should read: "This is the first ant to plant its future home."

~~~
peller
Even that doesn't appear to be true, though:
[http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/on-fiji-ants-have-
lea...](http://arstechnica.com/science/2016/11/on-fiji-ants-have-learned-to-
grow-plants-to-house-their-massive-colonies/)

EDIT: I'm dumb, same ants.

~~~
ndonnellan
This DW article seems to be a poor regurgitation of the arstechnica one (which
includes the proper link to the research).

------
lubonay
Who would've guessed that ant makes java in nature as well!

------
tnjm
It's continually frustrating that articles like this don't link to the
original research. In the age of Sci-Hub, research is so much more accessible
than ever before. More non-academic traffic to publishers' sites might even
encourage them to offer sensible legal ways of getting hold of papers too, as
JSTOR have.

I couldn't immediately find a DOI for this -- it's possible, of course, that
it's unpublished (it sounds like PhD work). That would be useful to know, too,
though.

~~~
bmc7505
The paper is called, "Obligate plant farming by a specialized ant".
(doi:10.1038/nplants.2016.181)

[http://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2016181](http://www.nature.com/articles/nplants2016181)

~~~
tnjm
Brilliant: thank you!

------
has2k1
What I find interesting and not mentioned in the article is the implications
that follow from the fact that coffee is not native to Fiji. So, either the
ants came with the coffee to Fiji having perfected the art in a different
location. Or despite it so, that both species are 3 million years old, this
behaviour is only a few hundred years old.

~~~
KMag
I was wondering the same thing. My first thought was that perhaps here
"coffee" is being used in this popular press article as a shorthand for a
relative of the coffee plant, but I haven't been curious enough to dig up the
five "coffee" species names and research them. I'm not particularly
knowledgable about coffee (I'm not even sure if arabica is a sub-species or
proper species), but I would be surprised if there are 5 proper species of
coffee used commercially.

~~~
detaro
There are a lot of species in the genus _Coffea_ , and multiple ones (not sure
how many) are used commercially, but the vast vast majority (probably >98%) on
the market is either robusta or arabica (which are different species).

------
Karlozkiller
Ant intelligence is often attributed to simple rule following behaviour and
the ability to make the next ant adapt to what you have already done, for
example they optimize the path to some food-source by leaving scent trails
that will fade if no ants travel the road.

They've also been known to measure the size of enclosed areas by simply
following the outer boundary until they find the initial starting
point/entrance again and somehow using the time or effort it took, to be a
measure of the size of the place.

It seems to be different species of ants having different behaviours, so maybe
they're just stupid rule followers as one might first think. Now if we could
make one species of ants learn from and adapt behaviour from another species,
then there's no doubt they possess intelligence. And if they're not
intelligent, should we attribute the ingeniousness these tiny buggers display
to evolution instead?

~~~
amasad
You can test this by rearing a generation of ants with no contact with the
previous generation and see if they exhibit the same behavior.

My bet would be on that it's all innate. I haven't seen examples of
intergenerational knowledge transmission in anything other than primates.
(Maybe because primate offspring spend much a long time growing up to be
adults which gives them time to learn)

~~~
louhike
As someone who have seen a lot of wildlife documentaries, I have to disagree.
I've seen of lot of cases of parents showing how to find food, how to hunt or
find shelter, etc. Most animals are able to learn at least in their youth.

~~~
Quarrelsome
yes but ants are insects, not mammals. Insects have crazy amounts of children
and their birthing patterns don't probably don't translate well to learning by
example as the parent doesn't have time to teach all the children. I think the
innateness is a more likely cause.

~~~
ryan_j_naughton
Actually the founder of the field sociobiology (or at least the main
popularizer) is EO Wilson. He studies ants, and since he effectively founded
the field, many scientists who study mammals actually studied under him since
there wasn't an established place for sociobiology then.

Of course intelligence and sociology/social behavior are different; however,
they virtually always have overlaps if any complex intelligence is to occur.
It's because you need intergenerational culture to exist in order to build up
such knowledge.

EO Wilson and others have proven such intergenerational knowledge transfer
exists in ants.

Intelligence doesn't need to occur at an individual level. The hive can be
intelligent through emergent properties and can also maintain state that acts
like memory for learned experiences.

[http://discovermagazine.com/2008/nov/12-wilson-says-ants-
liv...](http://discovermagazine.com/2008/nov/12-wilson-says-ants-live-in-
humanlike-civilizations/)
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/E._O._Wilson)
[http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/](http://www.pbs.org/program/eo-wilson/)

~~~
amasad
Fascinating. Is there a book that you recommend to read more about this?

------
DeepYogurt
There are ants that harvest leafs in order to cultivate fungus as well as well
as ants that cultivate aphids, so cultivating something else is really not
that surprising. That said, ants are cool and coffee is cool and I'm glad I've
now read about their intersection.

~~~
MyNameIsFred
The striking difference here, at least to me, is the a matter of scale and
delay. Aphids and fungus are smaller than the ants, and have shorter
lifecycles than the ants themselves. Planting and cultivation of a coffee
plant suggests understanding of much larger scale (both literally and
conceptually).

~~~
YCode
I don't know if understanding is the right word to use.

Over time the ants have acquired a series of triggers and actions that have
(apparently) made them more fit to survive.

They don't necessarily understand that for example that planting and
fertilizing seeds will yield a safe place to live, they are just driven to
take those actions when they encounter whatever trigger those seeds activate
in them.

For example when an ant dies it puts off oleic acid and when others pick up on
this scent they cart if off to a "burial" site.

However the ants don't understand death. If you coat a live ant with oleic
acid the ants will carry it off even as it resists and tries to clean itself
and dump it in the dead pile.

Collective intelligence is a strange concept to work with because the ant
isn't really the animal, the animal is the colony.

Even still I don't know that the colony "understands" what is happening, it
just feels a collective drive to take the actions.

~~~
fermuch
Even without an Ego it is still impressive. Just imagine the steps that led to
transmit these traits. How did the first ones know that by planting a seed a
plant would grow? How did they know that by adding soil it would help to the
growth of the plant? Ants are so perfectly in harmony with the colony that I
can't imagine how an ant would step into botany without external input; they
don't have time to try new things, they're always doing a task for the greater
good of the colony.

~~~
YCode
I wouldn't say they don't have the time or resources. At any given point there
are a fair number of ants that are effectively waiting in reserve for
something that requires their attention.

Don't get me wrong, it's quite impressive.

Still, considering how fastidious ants are about cleaning in and around their
nests* it's quite feasible one or more colonies might take to disposing of
seeds in a way that lets the seeds grow and/or pick up on the habit of dumping
waste products on the seedlings which the plants then use as fertilizer.

One thing that shouldn't be ignored is that it could work the other way as
well. Maybe a seed was made one day that carried chemicals which caused the
ants to plant it and/or poop on it.

There's evidence of this sort of thing with moths whose young emit chemicals
causing the ants to carry them back to the nest and feed them until they reach
adulthood and fly off.

And there's the infamous "zombie ant" fungus.

Again, the ants probably don't "know" or "care" in any intellectual sense
whether it will work, it's simply an idiosyncrasy they picked up. I imagine
there are plenty of strange activities ants are evolving to pick up right now
that will or wont work to make them more fit to survive.

* The next time you see an ant hill note how well maintained and free of surrounding debris it is.

------
mountainplus
Whether it is innateness or something entirely different I wouldn't know. But
ants are certainly one of the most intriguing subjects I like to read about.

To anyone who's interested in paths, ants, and some similar musings, I'd
recommend Robert Moor's book: On Trails
([http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276431-on-
trails](http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/27276431-on-trails)).

------
logingone
Does anyone here have an ant farm? Worthwhile? Interesting species?

------
gmoes
If you are interested in this topic I would highly recommend The Ants by E.O.
Wilson Bert Holldobler. I was lucky enough to observe ant symbiosis in my
yard. Their book helped me understand what I saw. I did a write up of it here:
[http://www.elegantcoding.com/2016/05/my-ant-symbiosis-
storie...](http://www.elegantcoding.com/2016/05/my-ant-symbiosis-
stories_31.html)

------
johnohara
FTA: "Ants live symbiotically with other animals as well as plants. For
example, 'herder' ants take care of aphids, defending them against ladybirds
and 'milking' them."

From Feynman's "There's Plenty of Room at the Bottom" on the how it might be
possible to miniaturize manufacturing:

"What I would like to suggest is the possibility of training an ant to train a
mite to do this."

~~~
has2k1
You are heading towards a search algorithm. That is, a search for the right
incentives/disincentives for possibly all of the biological organisms that
make up the manufacturing stack. Then the question becomes can you purchase
enough Time which is perhaps the key ingredient in search problems.

~~~
johnohara
To be accurate, those are Feynman's words, not mine. Taken from the talk he
gave in 1959. He was discussing how to manufacture at the smallest levels. I
thought them prescient when I read the "milking" statement in the article.

~~~
has2k1
When I read the transcript of that talk some years ago, I spent some time
trying to come to grips with how trans-formative the idea was.

------
ChuckMcM
Boy would I love to own that Starbucks franchise!

More seriously though, ants are an interesting mechanism. As a kid I watched
them farm aphids on my parent's tomato plants. That really amazed me.

It is interesting that in the Bay Area at least nearly all of the native
species of ant are being out competed by the Argentine ants. As far as I can
tell the Argentine ants don't cultivate things.

------
JoeAltmaier
In other news, squirrels plant oak trees (then live in them) and bees
pollinate their own food source.

------
amenghra
Empire of the ants is a fun piece of fiction:
[https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Ants_(novel)](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Empire_of_the_Ants_\(novel\))

~~~
JackFr
"Leiningen Versus the Ants"
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leiningen_Versus_the_Ants))
is a great short story - also inspiration for the name of the Clojure build
tool.

------
dghughes
I thought it was interesting that the ants and the coffee plant are both three
million years old.

Imagine if the ants were a bit older if so I wonder if it would be possible
they created the coffee plant through selective breeding.

------
d1ffuz0r
It would be interesting to see what will happen if we send these ants to the
space, for how long they can survive. They could be first creatures from the
Earth to live on Mars and other planets

~~~
guardian5x
And let them mutate, become super intelligent killer giant ants and declare
war on earth? No thanks! But seriously, they would probably just die..

------
wyclif
Even ants know that coffee is for closers.

------
clayrichardson
Non mobile linque: [http://www.dw.com/en/ant-species-cultivates-coffee-for-
accom...](http://www.dw.com/en/ant-species-cultivates-coffee-for-
accommodation/a-36477533)

~~~
sctb
Thanks, we've updated the link.

------
cheeze
Mods, can we update the link here with the non-mobile version?

[http://www.dw.com/en/ant-species-cultivates-coffee-for-
accom...](http://www.dw.com/en/ant-species-cultivates-coffee-for-
accommodation/a-36477533)

Thanks!

