BIOREFINERY? Leafcutter ants tend to their fungal gardens, which may inform the production of biofuels used by humans.MICHAEL POULSEN (UNIVERSITY OF COPENHAGEN)
In a humid room at the University of Wisconsin–Madison (UW), large Tupperware boxes hold thick beds of gray fungi, pockmarked with holes and crawling with leafcutter ants. The boxes are home to colonies of two leafcutter species, Atta cephalotes and Acromyrmex echinatior, brought back from the tropical forests of Panama and Costa Rica by bacteriologist Cameron Currie and his colleagues, who study these insect agriculturalists and the fungus gardens they tend.
Leafcutter ants create the largest colonies of any ant, with some comprising 8 million individuals. To sustain themselves, they march across the forest carrying vast quantities of leaves, piece by piece, in great green convoys, back to the nest. The ants use the leaves as fertilizer to cultivate gardens sown with bacteria and Leucoagaricus ...
