Ants learned to farm 50 million years ago, way before humans did. Their crop of choice? Fungus. Meet the leaf-cutter ant. These ants carve out pieces of leaves and carry them back home. But the ants don’t eat the leaves themselves—they feed it to Lepiotaceae fungus they cultivate in their nests. The fungus breaks down plant polymers that the ant digestive enzymes can’t, making the plants nutritionally available to the ant hosts when the ants eat the farmed fungus.
Jennifer Tsang ⬩ The Leaf-cutter Ant’s 50 Million Years of Farming
added February 11, 2024 ⬩ random excerpt