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October 17, 2025EvolutionOpen Access

Repeated, irreversible evolution of ant-following behavior across Neotropical avian families

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Authors

WSWilliam SweetJBJustin W. BaldwinJGJuan Pablo Gómez

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Overview

Analysis reveals ant-following evolved independently in multiple families, suggesting niche conservatism limits specialization.

Key Points

  • Ant-following behavior evolved independently across eight avian clades, indicating a complex evolutionary process.
  • Specialized ant-following was conserved phylogenetically (Pagel’s λ = 0.97), showing limited reversals across species.
  • Ecomorphological traits poorly predicted the degree of specialization on army ants among the studied avian families.
  • The study compiled data on 472 species to understand evolutionary patterns relating to ant-following behavior.

Cite This Study

Sweet et al. (2025) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/68f199d1de32064e504dd67dhttps://doi.org/10.1093/evolut/qpaf214
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