Question

Aphids can feed in the leafy treetops (or tree canopies). Ants are usually not abundant in the tree canopies unless aphids are also present. You introduce aphids to an area of the tree canopy and survey the abundance of ants over time.

True or False:

1. You would expect ant abundance to decrease over time.

2. You continue your experiments by taking one of the trees in the canopy and removing all of the ants. If the ants and aphids are in a mutualistic relationship that strongly benefits them both, you expect the aphid population will decrease in size in response to the lack of ants.

3. The best control for your experiment in the question directly above is a tree in which you add a second ant species and you measure the abundance of the first ant species over time.

Please help!!! Thanks!

Answer 1

Answer No 1: False

No, we will not expect the ant population to decrease over time. This is because in our experiment we have included aphids to an area of tree canopy. We expect to see an abundance in the ant population as the population of aphids is increased. We expect these results on the basis of our previous observations.

Answer No 2: True

As seen by our observation that the number of ants increase if we increase the number of aphids, we can deduce that the ants might have a mutualistic relationship with the aphids. As a result, if we remove ants from a tree, the aphids will also decrease from the tree.

Answer No 3: False

Our control in this experiment cannot be two different species of ants as we are studying the mutualistic effects of ants and aphids. Hence, introducing two types of ants will have nothing to do with our hypothesis.