This should not be confused with the Devil's gardens

Devil's gardens

The Devil's gardens was the name given by Erwin Rommel, commander of the German Afrika Korps during World War II, to the defensive entanglements of land mines and barbed wire protecting his positions during the Second Battle of El Alamein in late 1942...

In myrmecology

Myrmecology

Myrmecology is the scientific study of ants, a branch of entomology. Some early myrmecologists considered ant society as the ideal form of society and sought to find solutions to human problems by studying them. Ants continue to be a model of choice for the study of questions on the evolution of...

 and forest

Forest

A forest, also referred to as a wood or the woods, is an area with a high density of trees. As with cities, depending where you are in the world, what is considered a forest may vary significantly in size and have various classification according to how and what of the forest is composed...

 ecology

Ecology

Ecology is the scientific study of the relations that living organisms have with respect to each other and their natural environment. Variables of interest to ecologists include the composition, distribution, amount , number, and changing states of organisms within and among ecosystems...

, a devil's garden (Kichwa: Supay chakra, Spanish

Spanish language

Spanish , also known as Castilian , is a Romance language in the Ibero-Romance group that evolved from several languages and dialects in central-northern Iberia around the 9th century and gradually spread with the expansion of the Kingdom of Castile into central and southern Iberia during the...

: Jardin del Curupira) is a large stand of tree

Tree

A tree is a perennial woody plant. It is most often defined as a woody plant that has many secondary branches supported clear of the ground on a single main stem or trunk with clear apical dominance. A minimum height specification at maturity is cited by some authors, varying from 3 m to...

s in the Amazon Rainforest

Amazon Rainforest

The Amazon Rainforest , also known in English as Amazonia or the Amazon Jungle, is a moist broadleaf forest that covers most of the Amazon Basin of South America...

 consisting almost exclusively of a single species, Duroia hirsuta

Duroia hirsuta

Duroia hirsuta is a myrmecophyte tree species from the Amazon Forest. It is one of some 37 species of Duroia which are shrubs or canopy trees in the family Rubiaceae, favouring ants , and occurring in Central America as far north as Mexico, the Amazon Basin, the Guiana Shield, the Brazilian...

. Devil's gardens are immediately recognizable because the dominance of a single tree species is dramatically different from the biodiversity

Biodiversity

Biodiversity is the degree of variation of life forms within a given ecosystem, biome, or an entire planet. Biodiversity is a measure of the health of ecosystems. Biodiversity is in part a function of climate. In terrestrial habitats, tropical regions are typically rich whereas polar regions...

 of the forest as a whole.

According to Deborah Gordon

Deborah Gordon

Deborah M. Gordon is a biologist at Stanford University.- Major research :Gordon studies ant colony behavior and ecology, with a particular focus on red harvester ants. She focuses on the developing behavior of colonies, even as individual ants change functions within their own lifetimes.Gordon's...

 devil's gardens got their name because locals believed that an evil forest spirit Chullachaki (meaning "uneven foot, single foot" in Kichwa) lived in them.

The ant

Ant

Ants are social insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than...

 Myrmelachista schumanni

Myrmelachista schumanni

Myrmelachista schumanni, also known as the lemon ant, is a species of ant that is notable for the creation of Devil's garden. Using its own herbicide, it is able to shape its surroundings....

creates devil's gardens by systematically poisoning all plants in the vicinity except D. hirsuta, the tree in which it nests. The ant poisons the plants by injecting

Injection (medicine)

An injection is an infusion method of putting fluid into the body, usually with a hollow needle and a syringe which is pierced through the skin to a sufficient depth for the material to be forced into the body...

 formic acid

Formic acid

Formic acid is the simplest carboxylic acid. Its chemical formula is HCOOH or HCO2H. It is an important intermediate in chemical synthesis and occurs naturally, most notably in the venom of bee and ant stings. In fact, its name comes from the Latin word for ant, formica, referring to its early...

 into the base of the leaf

Leaf

A leaf is an organ of a vascular plant, as defined in botanical terms, and in particular in plant morphology. Foliage is a mass noun that refers to leaves as a feature of plants....

. By killing other plants, the ant promotes the growth and reproduction of D. hirsuta which has hollow stems that provide nest sites for the ants; A single ant colony might have more than 3 million workers and 15,000 queens, and may persist for more than 800 years. Although the ants fend off herbivore

Herbivore

Herbivores are organisms that are anatomically and physiologically adapted to eat plant-based foods. Herbivory is a form of consumption in which an organism principally eats autotrophs such as plants, algae and photosynthesizing bacteria. More generally, organisms that feed on autotrophs in...

s, the size of the garden is restricted by leaf destruction increasing as it expands, as the ants are unable to defend the trees beyond a certain point.

Frederickson points out that this symbiosis

Symbiosis

Symbiosis is close and often long-term interaction between different biological species. In 1877 Bennett used the word symbiosis to describe the mutualistic relationship in lichens...

 is an example of niche construction

Niche construction

Niche construction is the process in which an organism alters its own environment, often but not always in a manner that increases its chances of survival...

.