Biology 2483A Lecture Notes - Lecture 14: Cleaner Fish, Advantageous, Field Experiment
Document Summary
Ants started cultivating/growing fungi for food ~50 million years before the first human farmers. Ant farmers nourish, protect, and eat the fungal species they grow, forming a relationship that benefits both. Ants cannot survive without their fungi; many of the fungi cannot survive without the ants. A colony may contain hundreds of gardens (football size) each can feed 2 8 million ants. Leaf-cutter ants cut bits of leaves from plants and feed them to the fungi. The ants chew the leaves to a pulp, fertilize them with their own droppings, and weed the fungal gardens to help control bacterial and fungal invaders. The fungi produce specialized structures called gongylidia, on which the ants feed. The ants scrape a waxy covering from the leaves that the fungi have difficulty penetrating. The fungus digests and detoxifies the chemicals that plants use to deter insect herbivores. Nonresident fungi, pathogens, and parasites can invade the colonies but don"t destroy gardens.
