Leafcutter Ants

Leafcutter ants are amazing insects. At least 47 species are known across the American tropics. The ants chew hunks of leaves and flowers out of trees, The ants can carry 20 times their body weight (Wikipedia). Long lines of ants carry their bounty down the tree trunks and tramping highways across lawns and the forest floor. The highways converge at huge, underground burrows.

There the ants use the leaves to grow nutritional fungi to feed the colony. The fungi produce nutritious “fruiting bodies” to feed the ants. Both the ants and the fungi are mutually dependent on each other.

Wikipedia assures us that “next to humans, leafcutter ants form the largest and most complex animal societies on Earth.” Their burrows can become huge, over 100 feet across and may contain eight million individuals. Many leafcutter societies are composed of four casts—fungus gardeners, burrow guards, leaf-cutting foragers, and soldiers.

Watch your step in the jungle or in the eco-lodge lawn. The soldiers will defend their highways and foragers. The ants can also cause agricultural damage. When they cut flowers, however, the resulting line of colors can be astounding. In Ecuador, we discovered, to our dismay, that leafcutter ants are also fond of nylon and can completely destroy tent mosquito netting.