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In the fight against coffee pests, known as coffee berry borers, ants are allies, but a new discovery by Jonathan “Jonno” Morris (MS '16, PhD '24) has revealed there may be a new feature to this protection. 

Ecologists have known that large ants eat the berry borers, thus hindering the pests’ ability to colonize coffee plants, and that small ants can root the borers out of the homes they make for themselves in coffee fruits. Now, Morris has, for the first time, observed that small ant species can then use the habitats in the fruits to reproduce. 

Morris, who made this discovery while he was a graduate student at the University of Michigan School for Environment and Sustainability (SEAS), says, “In terms of pest control, this is primarily a good thing because it’s benefiting the ants in terms of their populations and fitness. The ants gain this reproductive benefit that’s originally created by the coffee pest. And this might actually help to maintain more diverse ant communities directly on the coffee plants."

Morris is currently a postdoctoral researcher at the Universidad Nacional Autónoma de México (the National Autonomous University of Mexico) and an affiliated U-M researcher continuing his work with SEAS Professor Ivette Perfecto. Alongside John Vandermeer in the Department of Ecology and Evolutionary Biology, Perfecto has been studying agricultural ecosystems on Central American coffee farms for 25 years.

Read the full press release on the Michigan News website.

Study: Indirect niche construction: A coffee pest facilitates its own ant natural enemies (DOI: 10.1002/ecy.70463)