{"id":1868,"date":"2020-10-18T07:46:25","date_gmt":"2020-10-18T07:46:25","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/?p=1868"},"modified":"2020-10-18T07:46:25","modified_gmt":"2020-10-18T07:46:25","slug":"orchid-lessons-by-naresh-swami-ants-the-guardians-of-orchid-flowers","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/orchid-lessons-by-naresh-swami-ants-the-guardians-of-orchid-flowers\/","title":{"rendered":"Orchid Lessons by Naresh Swami &#8211; Ants, the guardians of orchid flowers."},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"s1\">Ants are not known pollinators of any orchids. However, ants and orchids keep a mutually beneficial relationship &#8211; a complicated process least studied in the eastern Himalaya.<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"s1\">It has been recorded during my work that certain species of orchid flowers attract ants even before they open. The presence of ants scare away many insects that damage or fully destroy buds and flowers while they hunt for nectar, thus affecting the process of pollination and seed production.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"s1\">As flowers play a critical role in the survival of many species, orchid plants developed the system by which they attract certain species of ants with their nectar and in-turn the ants help in protecting the flowers from many damage causing insects.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n<p class=\"p1\" style=\"text-align: justify;\"><span class=\"s1\">It is interesting to note that those insects that cause no damage to buds and flowers are not being attacked by ants. Indeed these friendly insects are mostly pollinators of these species.<\/span><\/p>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1869\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1869\" style=\"width: 450px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO1a.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1869\" src=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO1a.jpg\" alt=\"Aerides sp. with ants.\" width=\"450\" height=\"616\" srcset=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO1a.jpg 450w, http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO1a-219x300.jpg 219w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 450px) 100vw, 450px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1869\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerides sp. with ants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<figure id=\"attachment_1870\" aria-describedby=\"caption-attachment-1870\" style=\"width: 446px\" class=\"wp-caption alignnone\"><a href=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO2b.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" class=\"size-full wp-image-1870\" src=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO2b.jpg\" alt=\"Aerides sp. with ants.\" width=\"446\" height=\"650\" srcset=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO2b.jpg 446w, http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2020\/10\/OLBNSAO2b-206x300.jpg 206w\" sizes=\"(max-width: 446px) 100vw, 446px\" \/><\/a><figcaption id=\"caption-attachment-1870\" class=\"wp-caption-text\">Aerides sp. with ants.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n<p class=\"p1\"><span class=\"s1\">Post 20 &#8211; 18\/October\/2020<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Ants are not known pollinators of any orchids. However, ants and orchids keep a mutually beneficial relationship &#8211; a complicated process least studied in the eastern Himalaya. It has been recorded during my work that certain species of orchid flowers attract ants even before they open. The presence of ants scare away many insects that &hellip; <a href=\"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/orchid-lessons-by-naresh-swami-ants-the-guardians-of-orchid-flowers\/\" class=\"more-link\">Continue reading <span class=\"screen-reader-text\">Orchid Lessons by Naresh Swami &#8211; Ants, the guardians of orchid flowers.<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[456,457,458,54,454,455],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1868"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1871,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1868\/revisions\/1871"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1868"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1868"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/naresh.org.in\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1868"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}