Leafcutter Ants

Leafcutter ants simply represent species of ants that are fungus farmers. On their own, they prepare their food, a unique fungus, beneath the surface of the garden. Ideally, leafcutter ants make a journey in lengthy lines, deep inside the forest while searching for leaves. Interestingly, they usually leave behind a scent as they are going in order for them to retrace their step back into the nest. Their blunt jaws or mandibles are the instruments being used to cut leaves away from plant, thereby using their back to carry very big pieces of leaves. Research has indicated that any leafcutter ants are capable of carrying about 10 times its natural weight. As these leaves get to their underground nests, they are chewed into a pulp. Eventually the decomposing pulp is preserved using ant feces as well as fungus spores, ultimately, strands of fungus grow over the decaying pulp. As a matter of fact, leafcutter ants do not eat the leaves rather they feed on the fungus crop.

Habitat and Range:

Naturally, leafcutter ants are fond of living inside a tropical rainforests as well as semi-tropical forests of central and South America. In addition, they can also be found in some part of southern North America.

The Colony:

Leafcutter ants are social insects that line in large underground colonies of about several millions of group of related ants. Each colony comprises of the following:

Queen: The queen starts her life with wings being applicable during the process of mating. She then flies straight to her nesting position as soon as she mates with a male ant or more. Immediately, she began to remove her wings and use the rest of her life to lay eggs. Anytime the queen flies to develop a fresh colony, she goes with many fungus using her mouth to begin a fungus garden inside the new colony.
Workers: These are some sterile or non-producing wingless female worker ants born by the queen. Routinely, the least workers take care of the eggs, grow fungus as well as feeding the members of the colony. Meanwhile the bigger workers all go out to gather leaves. Almost all the ants in any colony are workers.
Soldiers: Soldiers are very big workers that are sterile females who shoulder the responsibility of defending the colony as well as protecting the lines of those workers that bring in leaves.
Males: Male leafcutters though very small, they grow wings unlike the female workers. They usually fly from one colony to another to mate with queen and soonest after the mating process they die.
Anatomy: Leafcutter ants are very similar to many other insects with jointed legs, divided body segments, one pair of antennae and very tough exoskeleton. This exoskeleton comprises of items identical with over fingernails. Leafcutter are very big ants having long legs. While the worker leafcutter ant is between 0.1 to 0.5 inch long, the males are about 0.5 inch long. Meanwhile, the queen could be more than 1 inch long. It has different colors such as brown, red and black.

Life Cycle:

Leafcutter ants are make up of 4 stages egg, larva, pupa as well as adult. Whereas, the fertilized eggs usually produce female ants such as queens, workers or soldiers: the unfertilized eggs simply produce male ants.
Egg: Ant eggs are oval in shape but very tiny except the queen’s egg.
Larva: This is in form of worm without eye or legs.
Pupa: Beyond a particular size, the larva spins like cocoon round to adult form.
Adult: Adult grows from the pupa. The overall life cycle is always between 6 to 10 weeks.

Classification:

Class: Insects
Order: Hynaenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Tribe: Attin
There are almost 39 species of these ants.

In the final analysis, leafcutter ants harvest exists greenery in south American forest far above any other known animal. It consumes about 20% of the yearly vegetation growth. Its colony can move over 20 tons of soils throughout its lifetime.