Do Ants Provide Benefits to Fruit Trees?

Hello, all.

I was outside watching ants climb up the fruit trees: asian pear, apple, plum, etc.

The trees are pretty big but the ants still seem to investigate every single square millimeter of the trees: the trunks, branches, leaves, etc. If you put the tip of your finger down on a branch, they will find it pretty fast. It's like they patrol the entire tree--constantly.

I am wondering, do ants provide any benefits for these trees?

On the negative side, they farm aphids, and I have been tempted to put TangleFoot around the trunk. That way, the aphids lose their bodyguards and ladybugs can eat the aphids.

However, perhaps there are some positives I am overlooking.
Do ants also chase away pest insects that damage the fruits?
Do they eliminate ticks on the trees? It would be nice to think, if nothing else, a tree covered with ants has no ticks.
Do ants pollinate flowers?

Trying to think of some positives for all these ants on the trees.
Anything?

Ants are not all the same.

If you have red weaver Ants, they are outmost beneficial beside the biting just about anything and anyone touching the trees.
They will defend their tree against any pest and also against ants that place aphids into it...

It would help for you to put your area and temp zone in your sig.  As it is, we don't know if you mean fire ants, grease ants, or giant purple moosage ants. Here in TX we don't much like fire ants in our trees, but others are OK. We just monitor aphids if we see ants.

Ants can be beneficial if they are not attracted to the fruit.  I would suggest making sure they are not after the fruit.

This article might be of interest to you or others:

https://www.weekand.com/home-garden/article/little-black-ants-fruit-trees-vegetables-18025953.php

According to the Designer’s Manual, ants can add up to 50tons of organic matter per acre to soil per year (earthworms add 20tons/acre/yr). If they do not bite, I’d monitor for aphids and thank them for their service.

Now uncles are a whole other story, let one near a tree with pruners in the fall and…

I like Stefan's videos. He explains that ants can be an indicator of some conditions like high nitrogen in the soil.

That is an excellent point Jenny. Excess nitrogen makes for a lot of proteins, which are nitrogen based chemicals, for insects to make their bodies out of. I have found aphids to correlate with nitrogen rich soil conditions, likely linked to ants as well in many cases. The fertility, aeration and water infiltration ants provide almost undoubtedly outweighs their harm to the ecosystems, or else the would not be up there with beetles as the most ubiquitous, abundant and diverse animals on Earth. Everything gardens, and those animals that create deserts probably do not succeed and speciate as well as those that help facilitate verdant and diverse ecosystems.

The only thing I know for sure that ants do around here is help sow several species of woodland wildflowers (which makes it twice as perplexing why so few of the ones I've sown seem to be showing up, here). They gather the seeds in their dens, eat the outer layer then throw out the excess to grow. Not sure about any trees, or fruit. I'd imagine they're good for strawberries, given how those work.

And now, I present the flip side of the coin..... here in my little area of the country, high desert in the southwest, I have yet to see ants doing any good in my gardens. They have often killed many of my flowering shrubs and tomato plants by nesting in their roots. Don't exactly know how that works but it does, fairly often. I watch for a plant suddenly, in the case of tomatoes, or slowly, for lots of flowering shrubs, declining and.... if more water or fertilizer in a week or so doesn't help I immediately dig it up and find ANTS in and around the roots are the culprit!!! It happened again just this week!! If I dig them up and pot them up I can sometimes save them. I have had ants crawling up some of my tomato plants, drilling a hole in the side of the trunk and then hollowing out all the soft tissue from inside quickly killing the plants. No aphids involved. In the end, ants are only doing what is best for them and we are not their concern!

And Ben Zumeta, I have enjoyed your post very much. It is profound and intelligent. But when I changed the words from 'ants' and 'insects' and 'animals' to HUMANS and read it again.... well, I had to chuckle at that. Sure gives us something to think about! It's still pretty profound!