HEALTH AND FITNESS NEWS A FARMER ANT’S UNIQUE FUNGAL CROP

Much like human farmers, fungus-farming ants meticulously maintain their subterranean gardens. They regularly fertilize, weed and tend to their crops.

Now, researchers have discovered that one primitive species cultivates a kind of fungus that is entirely domesticated.

“These ants make their living by being farmers, and they are absolutely dependent on  this fungus,” said Ted Schultz, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution.

He and his colleagues will describe their findings in a coming issue of The American Naturalist.

Apterostigma megacephala was first describing in1999, based on the four specimens found in Peru and Columbia.

Ten years later, researchers discovered its nests in the eastern Amazon region of Brazil and realize that the ants cultivate a type of fungus that grows only in its nests and those of species of leaf-cutter ants.The fungus, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, evolved only two million years ago DNA sequencing shows that the ant belongs to an ancient lineage that date back 39million years.

How and when the species got hold of the fungus evolved more recently, about 12 million years ago.

The leaf-cutter ant that cultivates the fungus evolved more recently, about 12 million years ago.

Other primitive fungus farming ants cannot digest the fungus without dying, Schultz said.

LTH AND FITNESS NEWS A FARMER ANT’S UNIQUE FUNGAL CROP

Much like human farmers, fungus-farming ants meticulously maintain their subterranean gardens. They regularly fertilize, weed and tend to their crops.

Now, researchers have discovered that one primitive species cultivates a kind of fungus that is entirely domesticated.

“These ants make their living by being farmers, and they are absolutely dependent on  this fungus,” said Ted Schultz, an entomologist at the Smithsonian Institution.

He and his colleagues will describe their findings in a coming issue of The American Naturalist.

Apterostigma megacephala was first describing in1999, based on the four specimens found in Peru and Columbia.

Ten years later, researchers discovered its nests in the eastern Amazon region of Brazil and realize that the ants cultivate a type of fungus that grows only in its nests and those of species of leaf-cutter ants.The fungus, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, evolved only two million years ago DNA sequencing shows that the ant belongs to an ancient lineage that date back 39million years.

How and when the species got hold of the fungus evolved more recently, about 12 million years ago.

The leaf-cutter ant that cultivates the fungus evolved more recently, about 12 million years ago.

Other primitive fungus farming ants cannot digest the fungus without dying, Schultz said.