Ants Are Experienced Fungus Farmers
ScienceDaily (Mar. 25, 2008) — It turns out ants, like humans, are true farmers. The difference is that ants are farming fungus.
Entomologists Ted Schultz and Seán Brady at the Smithsonian's National Museum of Natural History have been providing new insight into the agricultural abilities of ants and how these abilities have evolved throughout time. Using DNA sequencing, the scientists were able to construct an "evolutionary tree" of fungus-growing ants, which revealed a single pioneering ancestor that discovered agriculture approximately 50 million years ago.
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