The Leaf Cutting Ant Caste System. To manage the enormous tasks required for a farming ant colony, leaf-cutters have divided roles, or castes. Leaf-cutters, like many insects, are polymorphic, meaning ...

Ants don’t eat leaves. They use them to grow white tufts of nutritious fungus to feed their offspring. ... The ant colony is of the species Atta cephalotes – one of 50 leafcutter species in the ...

Leafcutter ants march in two rows along the rainforest floor, carrying pieces of leaves back to their nest. It’s a striking operation above ground, but the story doesn’t stop there.

One researcher in South America estimated that a large leaf cutting ant colony harvested approximately 13,000 pounds of leaves over a 6-year period. This same colony excavated 802 cubic feet of ...

Insects like ants heal their fellow species, and they even perform surgeries. Biologist Erik Frank is researching their ...

They are capable of carrying up to seven times their body weight, but leaf cutter ants are slacking off for the greater good, says an Australian researcher. In a paper published in today's Biology ...

Leaf-cutter ants at the American Museum of Natural History in April. The colony was harvested in Trinidad and nurtured in Oregon, and it arrived in New York City last December.

Most people who are stung by the ants are stung while gardening or doing other yard work. The small ants are very hard to ...

Leaf-cutter ants are named for their Herculean feats: they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies.

Memorable activities included observing oil birds, the only nocturnal fruit-eating bird, and watching 2,000 scarlet ibises fly to a roost site on a small island. The animal life which captured my ...

These ants are responsible for gardening, feeding other ants, caring for young ants and cleaning other ants and leaves. Leaf-cutters also divide themselves by age and ability. The colonies put their ...