Meat ant some are inquilines and live in the nest commensally. Unused or abandoned areas inside colonies are sometimes occupied by other species of ants and in some cases, termites. Meat ants may deliberately destroy the colonies of the termite "Amitermes laurensis" if competition between the two intensify. Meat ants play an important role in seed dispersal. A meat ant colony is capable of dispersing 334,000 individual bellyache bush seeds per hectare, which shows a strong ant-seed relationship among the two. Meat ants are able to kill poisonous cane toads, an introduced pest, as the toxins exuded by toad, that usually kill
Leafcutter ant virulent fungus, has the potential to devastate an ant garden, as it is horizontally transmitted. "Escovopsis" was cultured, during colony foundation, in 6.6% of colonies. However, in one- to two-year-old colonies, almost 60% had "Escovopsis" growing in the fungal garden. In some parts of their range, leafcutter ants can be a serious agricultural pest, defoliating crops and damaging roads and farmland with their nest-making activities. For example, some "Atta" species are capable of defoliating an entire citrus tree in less than 24 hours. A promising approach to deterring attacks of the leafcutter ant "Acromyrmex lobicornis" on crops has been demonstrated.