Biology 2483A Lecture Notes - Goby, Olneya, Ovipositor
5 Dec 2013
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The fungus-growing ants in the tribe attini started cultivating fungi for food at least 50 million years before the first human farmers. The ant farmers nourish, protect, and eat the fungal species they grow, forming a relationship that benefits both the farmer and the crop. The ants cannot survive without their fungi; many of the fungi cannot survive without the ants. A virgin queen leaves her mother"s nest to begin a new colony, carrying fungi from her birth colony. A colony may contain hundreds of gardens, each the size of a football; they can feed 2 8 million ants. Other species such as leaf cutter ants do not cultivate fungi found in the environment. Instead, the fungi in their gardens comes only from propagules passed from a parent ant to each of its descendant colonies. Leaf-cutter ants cut bits of leaves from plants and feed them to the fungi.
