[BACK] An eight-hundred year-old Devil's Garden at Madre Selva has received international attention thanks to Stanford PhD student Megan Frederickson. Her research confirming the long-term residence of the Devil in the Amazon was published in the internationally prestigious journal Nature. Ms. Frederickson has worked for several years at a variety of sites in the Peruvian Amazon, including all three of the Project Amazonas field stations. It was a large Devil's Garden at the Madre Selva Biological Station that was the focus of much of her work, however. By measuring the rate of growth of Devil's Gardens of various sizes, Ms. Frederickson determined that the large garden at Madre Selva was most likely on the order of 800 years old, though it could potentially be considerably older as well.

So, just what the hell is a Devil's Garden? These are areas of forest that are dominated by a single species of understory tree - Duroia hirsuta (Rubiaceae) - which grow in monospecific stands with little to no growth of herps, shrubs or other trees in the same area. The result is a clearing-like area that is very open, and which more closely resembles a northern hardwood forest in early spring than it does a tropical rainforest. In essence, it appears that someone has cultivated the area, clearing out all the ground cover and all the brush - leaving only a bunch of spindly trees behind. The name Devil's Garden is a translation of "supay chakra" from the Quechua language. Since the Indians knew that they certainly hadn't cleared out such locations in the forest, it must have been the Devil or some other spirit which had done so. Formerly, local people would not even walk through such areas, even though the open nature of the gardens makes walking there much easier than walking in the adjacent forest understory.

While is has been known for decades that the Duroia trees have an association with tiny ants that live in hollow swellings in the twigs, it was Ms. Frederickson's research which first elucidated the nature of this relationship, and the benefit of it to the plants. A single large Devil's Garden (up to 0.5 ha or ~1.5 acres in size) may have hundreds of Duroia trees which are inhabitated by Myrmelochista ants. These are about 1/8th of an inch long and can form large colonies of millions of individuals and with 1000's of queens. Why no other plants grow in the Devil's Gardens was determined by a series of experiments, wherein Ms. Frederickson found that the tiny ants actually inject formic acid into the growing points and leaf bases of other plant species, causing the leaves to fall off, and eventually causing the death of the entire plant. The Duroia plant benefits as this reduces competition for sunlight and nutrients and provides its own seedlings with a favorable place to grow. The ants benefit when the Duroia stand expands, as there are more hollow branches to which their own colonies can expand. The ants cultivate scale insects inside the protection of the hollow branches - the scale insects feed on plant sap and produce honeydew, which the ants eat. In short, the plants pay for the services of the ants, and the ants pay rent for the handy living spaces that the plants provide. A prime example of a mutualistic relationship wherein both parties benefit.

Following publication of the research in Nature, many other journals, web journals, and news outlets discovered the story, and it gained very wide attention. Ms. Frederickson's work appeared in the following (a non-exhaustive list):

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Nature. Pp. 495-496; Vol 437, 22 September 2005. Megan E. Frederickson, Michael J. Greene & Deborah M. Gordon. 'Devil's gardens' bedevilled by ants.

*Stanford Report http://news-service.stanford.edu/news/2005/september28/devil-092805.html (good overview with photos)

The Times (London) http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,11069-1791821,00.html

The New York Times http://www.nytimes.com/2005/09/27/science/27obse.html (requires subscription)

The Boston Globe
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2005/09/26/ants_garden_in_amazon_to_improve_their_survival?mode=PF

Le Monde (France) http://www.lemonde.fr/web/article/0,1-0@2-3244,36-692219,0.html (in French)

Nature News http://www.nature.com/news/2005/050919/full/050919-6.html (requires subscription)

BBC News http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/low/sci/tech/4269544.stm

Scientific American http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?articleID=00029027-F4FC-1331-B4FC83414B7F0000&sc=I100322

National Geographic http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2005/09/0921_050921_amazon_ant.html

Discovery Channel http://dsc.discovery.com/news/briefs/20050919/ants.html

New Scientist http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn8032

Physorg.com http://www.physorg.com/news6662.html

Livescience.com http://www.livescience.com/animalworld/050922_ant_gardeners.html

Yahoo! News http://fullcoverage.yahoo.com/s/space/20050922/sc_space/scientistsdiscovertheevilspiritsindevilsgardens

The Daily Telegraph (London) http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2005/09/22/want22.xml

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