In article ,
Stephen Howard writes:
| On 10 Aug 2004 20:44:58 GMT, (Nick Maclaren) wrote:
|
| I have investigated the correlation between ant presence and aphid
| infestation in my garden and elsewhere and, in the cases I have seen,
| none were compatible with the hypotheses that ants spread aphids nor
| that they enhance an infestation.
|
| With all due respect, I think the use of the word 'investigated' is
| perhaps a tad over-enthusiastic... I recall that there were at least a
| couple of very significant factors that went unobserved in your study
| ( the most notable being, in the case of ants, no night-time study ).

No, you are mistaken.

While that is true, (a) the ants in the relevant location were all
diurnal (from separate observation) and (b) it does not affect my
investigations of patterns of infestation (checking on whether ants
spread aphids).

In particular, the latter is the aspect that I have observed fairly
widely, largely because it can be checked by a single observation
of the pattern of the aphid infestations.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.