Current Issue March 2014 magazine cover  Save 81% off the
newsstand price!  Small Matters  Millions of years ago,
leafcutter ants learned to grow fungi. But how? And why? And
what do they have to teach us?  Millions of ants in an area the
size of a small bedroom fill the nests. Once inside the
chambers, the leafcutters drop their burdens. Tiny gardening
ants take over. They clean, trim and crimp edges of the leaves,
smear their own secretions on them and rough up the surfaces. On
these chunks of leaf, which they line up in neat rows, the ants
then place bits of homegrown fungus.   Schultz and his close
collaborator, Ulrich Mueller, a behavioral ecologist from the
University of Texas at Austin, believe that the leafcutters’
ability to grow and harvest fungi is akin to human agriculture.
They even suggest that humans have something to learn from the
ants, pointing to the recent discovery that attines use
antibiotics to keep diseases in check inside their fungus
gardens. “Have you ever tried to keep anything in