Ecology and Evolution of Ant-plant Interactions

Ants are probably the most dominant insect group on Earth, representing ten to fifteen percent of animal biomass in terrestrial ecosystems. Flowering plants, meanwhile, owe their evolutionary success to an array of interspecific interactionssuch as pollination, seed dispersal, and herbivorythat have helped to shape their great diversity.The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactionsbrings together findings from the scientific literature on the coevolution of ants and plants to provide a better understanding of the unparalleled success of these two remarkable groups, of interspecific interactions in general, and ultimately of terrestrial biological communities. The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactionssynthesizes the dynamics of ant-plant interactions, including the sources of variation in their outcomes. Victor Rico-Gray and Paulo S. Oliveira capture both the emerging appreciation of the importance of these interactions within ecosystems and the developing approaches that place studies of these interactions into a broader ecological and evolutionary context. The collaboration of two internationally renowned scientists,The Ecology and Evolution of Ant-Plant Interactionswill become a standard reference for understanding the complex interactions between these two taxa.Rico-Gray, Victor is the author of 'Ecology and Evolution of Ant-plant Interactions ', published 2007 under ISBN 9780226713489 and ISBN 0226713482.