Read an Academic Passage — Seed dispersal by ants Roughly one plant species in twenty relies on ants to carry its seeds. The seeds of these plants carry an elaiosome, a fatty appendage that ants detach and feed to their larvae, discarding the seed itself in a refuse chamber or outside the nest. The arrangement costs the plant the energy of building the appendage and buys it three things: transport away from the parent, burial that hides the seed from rodents, and deposition in soil enriched by colony waste. Where ant populations have collapsed after the arrival of invasive species, the affected plants persist but their seedlings cluster within a metre of the parent, and their range contracts over subsequent decades. The word 'discarding' in the passage is closest in meaning to _____
