Ancient fungus farmers
Unbelievable as it sounds, leaf-cutter ants developed the secret of agriculture over 50 million years ago. In this article in Microbiology Today, Garret Suen and Cameron Currie describe how freshly-cut leaves are incorporated into gardens for the growth of a specialized fungus that the ants use for food:
Until about a decade and a half ago, research on fungus-growing ants focused primarily on the ants and their foraging behaviour. It wasn’t until the early 1990s that this focus shifted to the fungus gardens and their associated microbial communities. Since the ant gardens are maintained in soil chambers, they are routinely exposed to a number of potential pathogens that could infect and overtake a garden. In fact, many of the ant colonies do become overgrown by fungal pathogens, often resulting in the death of the colony. Intensive sampling of the fungal communities within the gardens revealed that a specialized microfungal pathogen selectively attacks the gardens of the fungus-growing ants.
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Tags: Agriculture, Environment, Fungi, Microbiology, Mycology, Science
