Leaf-cutter Ant

• It grows a symbiotic fungus that feeds the colony; it does not eat the leaves it cuts.
• comportamientoIt does not eat the leaves it cuts: it uses them as a growing medium for a fungus, which is what it does eat — a case of non-human farming.
• A single colony can hold several million ants.
• The queen can lay as many as 1,000 eggs a day.
• It does not eat leaves: it farms fungus. It cuts leaf fragments and carries them to the nest, where it chews them and uses them as a substrate for a fungus that exists only in these ant nests and on which the colony feeds. It is agriculture, and they have been practising it for some 50 million years.
• The colony has castes of very different sizes, from minute workers that tend the fungus to soldiers with jaws capable of cutting leather.
• The smallest workers ride on top of the leaf fragments carried by their nestmates, protecting them from parasitoid flies that try to lay eggs on their necks while their jaws are occupied.
• A mature nest can house several million individuals and shift tens of tonnes of soil.
• They keep the fungus garden free of parasites with bacteria they culture on their own cuticle, which produce antibiotics; it is one of the best-documented four-way symbioses.
• They are the main agricultural pest across much of the Neotropics: a colony can defoliate an entire tree in a single night.

Skeleton type

Invertebrate - chitin exoskeleton

Habitat & environment

Tropical forest edges of Central and South America, with underground nests that can cover as much as a hectare

Size at birth

Full development from egg to adult in 6-10 weeks

Sexual maturity

The founding queens start breeding as soon as the nuptial flight is over and the nest is established

Gestation / incubation

Not applicable in the usual sense; development from egg to adult in 6-10 weeks

Litter / clutch size

The queen can lay up to 1,000 eggs a day, producing 150-200 million offspring in her lifetime

Sources consulted: Marwell Zoo; AntWiki; Antark.net; Ant-Shack Care Sheet; Sara Guiti Prado; Wikipedia (Atta cephalotes, Leafcutter ant); arXiv (mathematical modeling study)