Nick Maclaren wrote or quoted:
In article , Tim Tyler wrote:
Nick Maclaren wrote or quoted:

Are you serious? Why on earth do you imagine that this particular
ecological association is constant over the whole earth, when no
other one is?

What didn't make sense was the idea that - because orgainisms of
one species eat organisms from another one, the two species are
not in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.

I did not claim that. What I claimed was the following:

I have seen no evidence that ants either cause aphid infestations
or enhance them in the UK, and that my observations and most of
the other information I have seen indicates that it probably does
not happen, at least as far as it affects gardeners.

I'd best restore the snipped exchange in full in this case:

--BEGIN--
Even there, I doubt that "ants are the aphids' friends", because it
is probably that there is more ant predation on aphids than ant
protection of them. [...]

AFAICS, that doesn't seem to make sense :-(

IMO, the ants are *farming* the aphids - in similar ways all over the
world.

Just because the ants eat the aphids, that doesn't mean the aphids
are /not/ being farmed. You might just as well argue that humans
are not farming pigs because people have been observed to eat bacon.

Are you serious? Why on earth do you imagine that this particular
ecological association is constant over the whole earth, when no
other one is?

What didn't make sense was the idea that - because orgainisms of
one species eat organisms from another one, the two species are
not in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.
--END QUOTE--

To reiterate my original point, observations of ants eating aphids
should not count as evidence that they are not also cultivating them, and
are not also in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship with them.

Analogously, evidence of humans eating bacon does not count as
evidence against the hypothesis that humans farm pigs; and that
the two species are in a mutually beneficial symbiotic relationship.
--
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