Why will leaf cutters kill their own sisters?
By Chelsie Vandaveer
May 22, 2002
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From southern Mexico to Brazil and into the Lesser Antilles lives the leaf-cutter ant, Atta cephalotes. These ants are specialized to live in gaps within forests. Atta cultivate a fungus, probably a basidiomycete, within underground gardens.
A colony starts with a single queen. She mated during her nuptial flight and carries from her mother colony a starter wad of fungal mycelia. If she survives, she may live for the next fifteen years and her colony may grow to ten million members. A colony can spread to 200 square meters and go to 6 meters deep. Odds are drastically against new queens. A 1944 study of Atta cephalotes found that only 10 percent of queens survive the first months.
Like all ants, Atta cephalotes colonies are sisters, daughters of the queen. The colony is divided into soldiers, the largest of the ants, and the workers. The largest of the workers are the leaf cutters. Cutters are attended by smaller workers that guard the cutters from parasitizing phorid flies. The leaf pieces are returned to the colony and handed off to gardeners.
The gardeners clean and chew the leaves into pieces 1 to 2 millimeters in diameter. The edge of each piece is chewed until wet and pulpy, then inserted into the fungus-covered substratum. The gardeners remove mites or aggressive 'weed' fungi that threaten their crop.
The smallest of the sisters are considered unclean by the colony. These are the rubbish chamber workers. The chambers are larger than the garden chambers to accommodate the mites, undesired fungi, and deceased members of the colony. These ants are condemned to the trash heaps and are attacked or killed if they attempt to leave their station.
Dr. Jim Wetterer's The Wild Ones Animal Index has photographs of leaf cutters carrying pieces of the leaf back to the colony. To view the photographs, click on the link:
http://www.thewildones.org/Animals/atta.html
To view the photograph of a soldier and workers attending the fungal garden taken by Alex Wild, click on the link:
http://www.myrmecos.net/myrmicinae/AttCep5.html
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Determined to document the vanishing riches of central Africa's last undeveloped reaches, National Geographic photographer Michael ''Nick'' Nichols set out with ecologist Mike Fay on the ''megatransect expedition,'' a grueling 456-day, 2,000-mile trek from Congo's deepest forest to Gabon's virgin shore. The result of their efforts is The Last Place on Earth, revealing a landmark work so startling that it caused the government of Gabon to set aside 11 percent of the country's interior rain forest as national parkland, creating 13 new national parks to protect virgin lands and wildlife.
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