11 Facts About Fungus-growing ants

Fungus-growing ants comprise all the known fungus-growing ant species participating in ant–fungus mutualism.

Leafcutter Fungus-growing ants, including Atta and Acromyrmex, make up two of the genera.

About 10 million years later, leaf-cutting Fungus-growing ants likely arose as active herbivores and began industrial-scaled farming.

The fungus the Fungus-growing ants grew, their cultivars eventually became reproductively isolated and co-evolved with the Fungus-growing ants.

Shortly after attine Fungus-growing ants began keeping their fungus gardens in dense aggregations, their farms likely began suffering from a specialized genus of Escovopsis mycopathogens.

The Fungus-growing ants evolved cuticular cultures of Actinomycetota that suppress Escovopsis and possibly other bacteria.

The mature worker Fungus-growing ants wear these cultures on their chest plates and sometimes on their surrounding thoraces and legs as a biofilm.

Fungus-growing ants's grows the garden, fertilizing it with her fecal liquid, but does not eat from it.

The majority of fungi that are farmed by attine Fungus-growing ants come from the family Lepiotaceae, mostly from the genera Leucoagaricus and Leucocoprinus, though variance occurs within the tribe.

Cellulose has been found to be poorly degraded and assimilated by fungus, if at all, meaning that the Fungus-growing ants that eat the fungus do not get much energy from the cellulose in plFungus-growing ants.

Attine Fungus-growing ants have very specialized diets, which seem to reduce their microbiotic diversity.