In article ,
"Paul D.Smith" writes:
|
| No, but why do you want to? All they are doing is collecting the
| honeydew from sap-sucking insects. Despite the tales of the old
| wives, there is no evidence that the ants do any harm - there is
| effectively NO evidence that they encourage infestations, and a
| fair amount that they are completely irrelevant.
|
| I would disagree. The ants themselves to no harm but from my own
| observations, they do actively deter helpful predators such as ladybirds
| from removing the aphids resulting in a heavily infested tree.

Do you have any evidence for that statement? Observations of
apparent conflict is no evidence of anything much. Your claim
is made by many people, but seems to be based entirely on
prejudice (i.e. judging the issue before obtaining evidence).
Specifically:

1) What evidence do you have that they actually deter helpful
predators such as ladybirds (i.e. reduce their numbers or effect
over what would have been the case without the ants)?

2) What evidence do you have that their actions result in a
heavily infested tree, rather than the heavy infestation being
the cause of the ant invasion?

Please note that I am perfectly happy to accept any form of real
evidence as such: a controlled experiment, a statistical analysis
or anything else reasonable.

I have done some analyses of aphids and ants, in my garden and
elsewhere, and have concluded that they have not had any causal
effect in the cases I analysed.


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.