The Darwinian diet: You are what you eat

Imagine millions of leafcutter ants on parade through a tropical forest. Driven by a craving mysterious to humans, they suddenly stream up a towering tree trunk. How do they know exactly which species of leaves to cut for ...

Ant farmers boost plant nutrition

Humans began cultivating crops about 12,000 years ago. Ants have been at it rather longer. Leafcutter ants, the best-known insect farmers, belong to a lineage of insects that have been running fungus farms based on chopped-up ...

After the age of dinosaurs came the age of ant farmers

A group of South American ants has farmed fungi since shortly after the dinosaurs died out, according to an international research team including Smithsonian scientists. The genes of the ant farmers and their fungal crops ...

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