Ants and aphids often occur in large groups, which must be taken into account when interpreting the data. Ants are colony-forming (Hölldobler and Wilson 1990, Harvard University Press), complicating their predictions if e.g. one ant nest was sampled. Destroyed ant nests by a mulcher could therefore cause more ant numbers, for example. The situation is similar to aphids, which often occur in large numbers (Blackman and Eastop, 2024, https://aphidsonworldsplants.info/). One reason for this is that they can reproduce asexually, i.e., they do not need males to reproduce. The predictions for ants and aphids should therefore be viewed with more caution.