When boastfully - brained humans manufacture agriculture , we were zillion of long time behind ants that have beenfarming fungisince shortly after the dinosaurs were start by an incoming asteroid . The relationship between the farmer and the produce provide an indication of how their interactions influence each other . A fresh study of insect / fungus co - evolution also tells us something about what we are doing to ourselves and our crop .
More than 240 ant coinage have adjust to farming kingdom Fungi , feeding nutrients to their charges to encourage growth and father a advantage that makes it all worthwhile . These ants even give rise their own antibiotics to protect their precious crops . Different ants , living side - by - side in an domain of rainforest the size of a large room , have follow diverging approaches , with some maximize productivity while others prioritise crops well able to survive in varying conditions .
" Atta ants evolved huge agro - industrial farms . They have jumbo colony with millions of prole . But they have miniscule brain and no detectable culture , so the grown question is ' How do they experience on the button what their crop needs ? ' " saidDr Jonathan Shikof the University of Copenhagen in astatement .
Yet the ants do indeed know what will befit their favorite fungus . " They take the air past many resources to pick up a flyspeck piece of louse shit that is exactly what they were looking for . They take it back to the nest and apply it to turn a fungus , " Shiksaid .
Credit : picture by Jon Shik
Shik and colleagues camped in the Panamanian rainforest , hoard the items that different species of ant delivered to their fungal charges and measuring their nutritionary mental object to empathize why items much seek by one emmet were ignored by others . InNature Ecology and Evolution , they reveal that the ants could assess with arresting truth whether an token they had never run into before would accommodate the specific fungus they were farming .
For example , too much protein can kill the fungus kingdom , and emmet would reject extremely high protein synthetic foods Shik tender them , even starving to last rather than overfeeding their crop . fresh carbohydrate - rich intellectual nourishment , however , were accepted thirstily .
Leafcutter antsare see among the more evolved fungal Fannie Merritt Farmer , becoming the agribusiness of the ant worldly concern with thousands of workers per dependency , in direct contrast to palaeoattines ' family farm - style of 10 - 100 workers . In doing so , however , they have adapt a fungus that is very productive , but also extremely specialized in the conditions it can thrive .
" In parallel to human cultural evolution where farmer and their crop have become increasingly co - dependent , so too have the ants and their fungous cultivar,”saidco - authorDr Bill Wcisloof the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute .
Humans have not had meter to biologically adapt to the intersection we produce , with the noteworthy exception of thespread of the genefor adult lactose leeway . Nevertheless , there are parallel with the fashion we have become socially discipline to expend a narrow scope of highly productive version of finical foods , neglecting strain that might bring home the bacon thegenetic diversityto ride out crises .
