Lorna's Page

I went to a talk last week about the dynamics of biotic communities on coffee plants on a 100 year-old organic shaded coffee plantation. The biotic interactions were fascinating, and ever increasing as the speaker elaborated on her research. The speaker was Ivette Perfecto from the University of Michigan. Here's the gist:



Arboreal ants live in nests in the shade trees and come down to tend scales (coffee herbivores) on the coffee plants and eat the honeydew produced by the scales. At… Continue