LAUSR

BACKGROUND Ants can become efficient biocontrol agents in plantation crops as they prey on pest insects and may inhibit plant pathogens by excreting broad-spectrum antibiotics. However, ants also provide a disservice by augmenting attended honeydew producing homopterans. This disservice may be avoided by offering ants artificial sugar as an alternative to honeydew. Here we tested the effect of artificial sugar feeding on aphid abundance in an apple plot with wood ants (Formica polyctena, Förster), and we tested the effect of ant presence on apple scab (Venturia inaequalis, Cooke) disease incidence. RESULTS Over a two-year period, sugar feeding eliminated ant attended aphid populations on the apple trees. Furthermore, scab symptoms on both leaves and apples were reduced considerably on ant trees compared to control trees without ants. The presence of ants on the trees reduced leaf scab infections with 34%, whereas spot numbers on fruits were reduced with between 53 and 81%, depending on apple variety. In addition, the spots were 56% smaller. CONCLUSION This shows that problems with wood ant-attended homopterans can be solved and that ants can control both insect pests and plant pathogens. We therefore propose wood ants as a new effective biocontrol agent suitable for implementation in apple orchards and possibly other plantation crops. This article is protected by copyright. All rights reserved.