Giraffes around the ant-plant, Acacia drepanolobium. Image courtesy of Todd Palmer. Scale-tending by an ant species. One of the ways in which the mutualism breaks down is that ants become more ...

Giraffes around the ant-plant, Acacia drepanolobium. [Image courtesy of Todd Palmer] ... "Mutualism gives way to nature, red in tooth and claw, as Darwin knew very well." Advertisement.

A few years ago, Todd Palmer, an ecologist at the University of Florida, was walking past a fenced-off research site in Kenya when he noticed something curious: Instead of thriving, acacia trees ...