Month: September 2022

MONOCULTURE. "Only the fungus-growing ants and termites have developed large-scale societies that are completely dependent on specific fungal symbionts for producing most of their food." https://lnkd.in/eGiw4-3 View in LinkedIn

HUNTERS AND CHEWERS. "The leaves in the rain forest have toxic qualities in them which is supposed to deter herbivory. But the harvesting ants cut the leaves without ingesting any of the toxins and are able to bring the leaves back to the nest. There the leaves are given to worker ants which chew up the leaves in their mouths into a paste which becomes the food source for the fungus." https://lnkd.in/eneZexX View in LinkedIn

GONOGLIDIA. "In return for receiving a continuous supply of leaf-material, protection from competitors, and dispersal, the fungus these ants grow provide nutrients in the form of specialized hyphal swellings called gongylidia. Gongylidia, which contain a mixture of carbohydrates, amino acids, proteins, lipids, and vitamins, is the sole food source for developing larvae." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn

TALKING FUNGUS. "Leaf cutter ants are sensitive enough to adapt to the fungi's reaction to different plant material, apparently detecting chemical signals from the fungus. If a particular type of leaf is toxic to the fungus, the colony will no longer collect it. The only two other groups of insects to use fungus-based agriculture are ambrosia beetles and termites." https://lnkd.in/ej4XkBq View in LinkedIn

EO WILSON AND BERT HÖLLDOBLER on the superorganism, based on their work on ants, which is midway between an organism and the entire species. Remarkable men, remarkable concept. Between them, they know more than anybody else about ants. No article on ants could be complete without homage to these two men. https://lnkd.in/ebEGeFc View in LinkedIn

ANT FARMERS. "Leafcutter ants are often compared to farmers, and the analogy works on many levels. They apply fertilisers to their crops, in the form of bacteria that provide nitrogen to the fungal gardens. They also use pesticides— they grow antibiotic-secreting bacteria that disinfect the fungi of parasites or competitors. https://lnkd.in/ekUnHks View in LinkedIn

SUPERCOW. "But you can also think of the ants as a dispersed cow, a single plant-digesting creature made of millions of bodies. The fungi are its guts." https://lnkd.in/ekUnHks View in LinkedIn

NEW FUNGAL VARIETIES. "∼22 million years ago, the association between a particular lower-attine ant and its leucocoprineaceous fungal cultivar underwent a fundamental change, giving rise to higher-attine agriculture. More recently, 2–8 million years ago, a higher-attine cultivar species gave rise to a new, even more specialized fungal species, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, presumably as the result of prolonged domestication by and/or coevolution with a leaf-cutting ant species." https://lnkd.in/et8V2SM View in LinkedIn

SCIENTIST-FARMERS. Ants "(a) sequester their gardens from the environment; (b) monitor gardens intensively, controlling pathogens early in disease outbreaks; (c) occasionally access population-level reservoirs of genetically variable cultivars, even while propagating clonal monocultures across many farmer generations; and (d) manage, in addition to the primary cultivars, an array of "auxiliary" microbes providing disease suppression and other services." https://lnkd.in/eCXuYqm View in LinkedIn

"FUNGAL CULTIVARS are transferred across generations when daughter queens carry within their mouths pellets of fungal cultivar from their maternal nests, producing transgenerational ant-fungus associations with shared reproductive fates." ("Symbiont fidelity"). http://www.jstor.org/stable/10.1086/680501 View in LinkedIn