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Ants as pollinators(sp)?

top4874

top4874

A few days ago I noticed some small ants on my Serrano plant. The plant had not set flowers yet, but had some buds on it. I went out today to check all my plants and found several small peppers have set on the Serrano. Upon closer inspection I noticed that the ants were crowded around the center of several of the flowers and started to wonder if they were responsible for pollination of all the peppers that were growing. Is it possible?

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I also noticed these evil little bastards on one of my wife's plants. I am currently plotting their demise. :hell:

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Neem oil my friend. I had some aphid problems just a few days ago, and neemed the plants and the aphids have quickly begun to disappear. Its organic too.

I have had ants on my plants too. Havent had any problems with them. I have noticed the ones with ants have a few more pods than the others, but nothing significant. Might be helping though.
 
My plant with the most ants is setting the most pods.
and ants will also keep spider-mite populations in check, thereby keeping your plants a bit safer.
Now, the trade off is that sometimes the ants will eat the nectar from the flowers, so if they don't pollinate a flower, bee's might be hesitant to follow through.
I've come to realize though that the way in which my fire escape is positioned, it gets soapy showers from the water that comes down the roof. That, coupled with sevin sprays has resulted in zero aphids (killed the few i had a few weeks back with the sevin), and a small colony of ants living beneath the roots of one of my habs. So basically, if you can make it so you can get 100% rid of the aphids and are in a controlled environment (my fire escape is a sort of environment in it of itself), you may be able to get away with leaving the ants in place while keeping the plants safe from aphids.
 
Ants pretty much serve no useful purpose for peppers. Where there are ants, there will usually be aphids. Aphids excrete honeydew, which ants feed on. In return, ants will transport aphids to higher leaves and also attack predators of aphids.
 
ditter said:
Ants pretty much serve no useful purpose for peppers. Where there are ants, there will usually be aphids. Aphids excrete honeydew, which ants feed on. In return, ants will transport aphids to higher leaves and also attack predators of aphids.
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IME here, ants do indeed act as pollinators. Cheers.
 
I used moats of water around some of my pots last season to keep the ants out.

The ants here love farming aphids.
 
Some intersting info

"Ants form a great group of social insects that are great lovers of nectar. These busy insects are often observed visiting flowers to collect energy rich nectar. Ants are wingless and must crawl into each flower to reach their reward. Ants are more likely to take nectar without effectively cross-pollinating flowers.

Researchers have discovered that some ants are not important pollinators, even though they visit flowers and may have pollen grains attach to their bodies. These scientists discovered that some ants and their larvae secrete a natural substance that acts as an antibiotic. This secretion protects ants from bacterial and fungal infections. Unfortunately for the flowers which are visited by these ants, this secretion also kills a pollen grain very rapidly when it comes in contact with this natural antibiotic"
http://www.fs.fed.us/wildflowers/pollinators/ants.shtml
 
Here in Thailand I've got 5 different types of ants on my property alone and termites to boot. My experience has been; one type farms aphids (I show no mercy), one type is pretty innocuous (lives in some of my pots; both capsicum and orchids) and does no harm, another type runs all through the flower knocking pollen all over (I've observed this first hand), and yet another is fearsome looking and can jump and has huge mandibles (no harm to capsicum), and the 5th type seems to herd a much smaller variety????; oh, and a 6th type in our house is the smallest ant I've ever seen and runs around at about 500 AMPH (ant miles per hour), I mean these guys are the road runner of the ant world.
Anyway; not to argue; just saying what I see. Cheers.
 
Chilies don't need insects for pollination since each flower has both male and female parts. A light breeze or a little plant shake is all that's usually required. IMO, insects just increase the chance the plant will be cross pollinated.
 
The aphids are on a house plant that is no where near my peppers. I sprayed them with neem yesterday and prob 60% are gone. Just to be safe, I sprayed my peppers as well. I don't know if it is bad luck or what but after being sprayed with neem one of my banana peppers dropped 80% of its leaves. Everything else is fine except that one plant. How often is to often to spray with neem?
 
I think it may depends on the type of ant and moreso the type of plant, although everything I've read suggests that ant pollinating is quite rare.

Here is a fairly detailed article on why ant pollination is rare
http://www.ableweb.org/volumes/vol-22/12-puterbaugh.pdf
 
Interesting read, but I noticed she avoided fire ants and conducted her experiments indoors. :)

Fire ants exist in great numbers here (OP's and my territory) and even if an ants chance of cross pollination was less than 1%, the numbers of fire ants here would still make the chance significant IMO. ;)
 
Mix a teas of ivory with your neem it helps to stick to bugs and plants be sure to mix as label says its pretty strong i sometimes spray every other day during aphid attacks.
never have had damage to any plants, have used it for 10 years.
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HawaiiAl said:
Mix a teas of ivory with your neem it helps to stick to bugs and plants be sure to mix as label says its pretty strong i sometimes spray every other day during aphid attacks.
never have had damage to any plants, have used it for 10 years.
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Thanks for clearing that up for me HawaiiAl. I have been spraying my peppers every 3-4 days as I have TERRIBLE trouble with moths/caterpillars. It doesn't seem to phase them though. I sprayed last night and this afternoon I noticed several large (I mean LARGE, as in bigger than my hand) leaves missing. I inspected the plant and found a caterpillar longer than my middle finger. He was munching away on another leaf that was bigger than my hand. In all I counted 6 leaves that he had eaten. I impaled him with a stick and fed him to some fire ants.

I am still leery of using soap after this. I will try some again the next time I spray. I just wont use as much. Thanks again everyone of all the interesting information. :dance:
 
If you want to quickly solve your worm problem, give your plants a good coating with a Spinosad solution. It's organic, much more effective than BT against other harmful critters and lasts longer to boot.
 
Here in Texas the fire ant is almost the official animal of the state. I am thinking of spreading DE over my garden when mounds start to show up. Will the extra calcium hurt the pepper plants? Would it cause lockout of nutrient absorbsion like an overdose of N will?
 
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