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

Maybe the people you consulted didn't pay attention to the ants -
but I reckon there are quite a few others who do. After all,
the UK Organic association and the The Royal Horticultural
Society, publicly state that ants protect aphid infestations -
and IMO, their relationship mythical or not, is pretty common
knowledge.

I find the idea that repetition of a myth by Eminent Bodies will
turn it into a fact somewhat bizarre.

It /is/ an odd idea. Where did you get it from?

Your responses to my pointing out that certain things were not
evidence.

You might be amazed at how much common knowledge (even as known by
'experts') is incorrect, and you certainly would at how much is
actually just favoured speculation.

Ants have been proven gulity on numerous occasions. The issue
appears to be that few (though at least one) of the experiments
which I can find illustrating ants protecting and cultivating
aphids were done with UK-native ants and aphids.

Actually, no. In the vast majority of cases, they were assumed
to be guilty and the results were shown to be consistent with that
hypothesis. There is a major difference.

These are some more UK papers which look like they bear on the
subject. Though reviewing them is currently beyond my scope,
some answers may lie within:

El-Ziady, S., and J. S. Kennedy. 1956. Beneficial effects of
the common garden ant, Lasius niger L., on the black bean
aphid, Aphis fabae Scopoli. Proceedings of the Royal
Entomological Society London (A) 31:61–65.

Now, THAT is evidence. It is the first proper test of anything
that I have heard of. It did an experiment very like the one I
described (oil bath and all), though with a very small sample
(3+3 for the matched sample, 7+7 in toto). If we ignore the statistical
uncertainty that causes, they showed that ants are consistently and
significantly associated with much larger numbers of aphids, and a
delay in developing their winged forms. The ant-free samples had
vastly more winged adults. They provided evidence to show that
the ants did remove ladybird larvae but that this was probably not
the main reason for the larger numbers of aphids.

They did NOT show any difference in the bean crop, nor did they
even speculate as to how many winged adults had developed on the
ant-free plants and left. It is therefore very weak evidence that
ants cause larger aphid infestations, rather than just preserving
the aphids in the apterygous form.

Nixon, G. E. J. 1951. The association of ants with aphids
and coccids. Commonwealth Institute of Entomology, London UK.

That isn't in the UL, so I can't check it. But, for the Nth time,
NOBODY BUT NOBODY is denying the association, so why do you keep
bringing it up?

The relevant questions are whether ants CAUSE aphid infestations
or ENHANCE their severity. The first paper is weak evidence for
the latter, and I have STILL seen no evidence of the former!


Regards,
Nick Maclaren.