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MAJOR HERBIVORES. "Fungus-farming (attine) ants are a clade of more than 240 described New World species that cultivate fungus gardens on which they obligately depend for food. The first fungus-farming ant evolved in South America from a hunter-gatherer ant ancestor ∼50–56 million years ago." 12 million years ago they became the major herbivores of the New World tropics. https://lnkd.in/et8V2SM View in LinkedIn

VAST SUCCESS. "Ants are one of the most successful insects on earth, comprising up to 20% of all terrestrial animal biomass and at least 25% of the entire animal biomass in the New World Tropics." https://lnkd.in/eCSpjH7 View in LinkedIn

GLOBAL TREASURE. "If a congress of naturalists were to gather to choose the seven wonders if the animal world, they would be compelled to include the bizarre and mighty civilizations of the attine leafcutters." (B. Hölldobler and EO Wilson). https://lnkd.in/eVFRvWm 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

HUMAN AGRICULTURE (plant domestication) started about 11,500 years ago, whilst ants have been cultivating fungi, bacteria and aphids for ~50-60 million years. This is ~50,000 - 100,000 times longer than mankind. 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

FRAGMENT FROM NATURE for the next two weekends will focus on the topic of leafcutter (Attine) ant farming. These lovely creatures have some of the most elaborate symbiotic relationships known: they cultivate a fungus for food, cultivate a bacteria to give that crop antibiotic treatments, and cultivate nitrogen-fertilizing bacteria as fungal food. And they have been at this for over 50 million years. These are the ultimate sustainable organic farmers. 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

QB SECTION END. This ends this large section on Quantum Biology. What is clear is that increasing phenomena in biology are ascribed to QB mechanisms, as our understanding deepens. This field is in its infancy, and practical applications are just starting to emerge with the confluence of nanoelectronics and biological molecules known to have QB mechanisms. https://lnkd.in/evm-KtE 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