How fungus-farming ants have nourished biology for 150 years

In 1874, Nature published a book review by the biologist Alfred Russel Wallace of The Naturalist in Nicaragua, in which author Thomas Belt hypothesized that leafcutter ants cultivate fungi in their nests (A. R. Wallace Nature 9, 218–221; 1874). Later that year, it published a letter from German biologist Fritz Müller to Charles Darwin, confirming that leafcutter ants rely on fungal symbionts to digest the plant material they collect (F. Müller Nature 10, 102–103; 1874).

Source link