ant-proof armor?
In the early sixteenth century, shortly after Columbus had arrived in Hispaniola and Spanish settlers had established huge plantain, banana, and (a bit later) sugar cane plantations on the island that is now Haiti and the Dominican Republic, a plague of fire ants swept across the island. It’s hard to overstate how dramatic this invasion was; people’s homes were teeming with stinging ants.
In an article in Nature magazine, biologist E.O. Wilson postulates that the Spaniards’ introduction of banana plants also introduced a type of insect that feeds on the roots of the plants, namely, sap-sucking coccids, mealy bugs, and other insects of the Homoptera group. The presence of these insects led to a huge increase in the population of fire ants (Solenopsis geminata). The fire ants protect these insects because the ants love to eat the sap-suckers’ sugary excrement, which is full of amino acids.
The Spaniards knew nothing about the homopterous sap-suckers, but they were suddenly engulfed by masses of fire ants that multiplied so heavily that people slept on their roofs, or were driven off the island entirely. Entire plantations were wiped out “as though fire had fallen from the sky and scorched them,” records a first-hand witness, B. de Las Casas.