Flowering plants promote speciation of ants
Ant diversification was probably triggered by the simultaneous emergence and rapid speciation of flowering plants during the Late Cretaceous 100 million years ago. This led to the formation of countless new niches and corresponding herbivorous insects that the ants could use.
This is the conclusion of a phylogenetic study by Harvard University's Corrie Moreau and colleagues, who compared gene sequences from nearly half of all 290 ant genera currently in existence and from 19 of the 20 existing subfamilies. The data was then time-calibrated with values from 43 ant fossils.
According to the researchers, most of today's subfamilies appeared as early as the early Cretaceous or even during the middle Jurassic, and thus much earlier than previously thought - but only in small numbers of species. The rapid increase in diversity, on the other hand, only occurred at the end of the Cretaceous and especially in the early Eocene, which is reflected in the increase in amber-conserved species from this period. The most likely cause, according to the scientists, is the simultaneous emergence of a large number of flowering plants and tropical forests, which provided the ants with new opportunities for life.
