Leafcutter Ants in the Panama Rainforest

Welcome to the world of leafcutter ants. Now you might be asking, where are the lines of ants carrying bright green leaves across the floor of the rainforest? It turns out that these ants are not always busy carrying leaves. These leafcutters are busy biting off pieces of fallen figs. Of the four main types of workers, called casts, the miners and the mediae are the two busy casts working on these fallen figs. The smallest workers, the minima, spend their time in the nest taking care of the young ants and the colony's fungus garden. The majors are the largest workers and act as soldiers to guard the nest and, in some cases, clear trails. The ants that first found these figs lay down a chemical trail to get other workers from the colony to follow them back to the food. All day long, leafcutters are in a constant race to gather food. Ants with special jaws will cut small pieces of fruit or leaves off of a plant and then usually hand off this food to another ant to carry back to the nest. Back and forth, the ants move all day long carrying bits of plant back to their nest, bit by bit. The leafcutters gather as much food as they can to help their colony survive and grow. The need to collect food keeps the ants moving, but it can also put them in the path of dangers lurking nearby. The parasitic forward fly may be on the lookout for a busy carrier ant. This fly will lay eggs on the leafcutter ant. There, the fly's young will develop and start eating the ant. To avoid this horrible fate, special guard ants travel with some of the carrier ants. Every once in a while, you'll see a guard ant riding on a leaf. They scare away the forward flies and some researchers think they may also do double duty by cleaning the harmful fungus off the leaves. When the leafcutter ants finally reach the nest, they won't be eating the leaves or the fruit they've been gathering. Instead, they will use it to feed their garden of fungus. It's the fungus that feeds most of the leafcutter ant colony. When the queen ant first started the colony, she brought a tiny bit of fungus with her. This started the fungus garden and the worker ants must keep the fungus alive by feeding it or the whole colony will run out of food. You can kind of think of leafcutters as ants that farm. Tending a garden of fungus can be dirty work. Leafcutters have special trash carrying ants that remove waste from the nest. To keep harmful fungus and bacteria away from the nest, the ants want to stay as far away from the trash pile as they can. The trash carrying ants will carry the waste out of the nest and will often climb up a tree and from there they'll drop the waste into their trash pile. This keeps the ants from having to touch the trash pile so they don't carry any harmful germs back to the fungus garden or the rest of the nest.