Ant attendance and ant behaviour toward synthetic fruits.

<p>(A) Occurrence of particular ant groups and (B) occurrence of beneficial behaviours at sampling stations. Experiments with synthetic fruits were carried out in two diverging forest types in the Atlantic forest, Southeast Brazil, undisturbed (white circles; four sites) and fragmented forest sites (gray circles; four sites). The ant groups (large ponerines and large <i>Pheidole</i> spp.) were those whose behaviours were considered as potentially beneficial to ‘seeds’ (either removing the entire ‘fruit’ or cleaning the ‘pulp’ <i>in situ</i>) during the 22-hour experiment. The number of stations (y-axis) in (B) corresponds to those stations having at least one of the five seeds either removed or cleaned by ants. Asterisks indicate significant differences (p<0.5) between forest types.