Arthur Nead
Futurity.org
March 7, 2013
http://www.futurity.org/science-technology/leaf-cutting-ants-prefer-low-fungi-leaves/
Summary:
Leaf-cutting ants are major defoliators, inflicting billions of
dollars of damage to agriculture in the southern United States and
Central America. The ants harvest chunks of leaves, bring them to their
nests, and pile them to create compost heaps that host a special fungus that the ants use to feed themselves and their larvae. However, a recent study shows that the ants selectively pick their leaves based on levels of another fungus already living in the leaves: cryptic endophytes. This symbiotic fungus is believed to negatively affect the growth of the food fungus the ants grow, and because of this ants will pick leaves with lower levels of this fungus. This discovery suggests that cryptic endophytes could be used someday as leaf-cutting ant detterent.
Relevance:
In the article symbiosis between plants and fungi and animals and fungi are shown, which links the article to our fungi unit as well as to some extent our plant unit.
If leaf cutting ants are sometimes such a big problem, inflicting lots of damage to agriculture, is there any way to get rid of such ants? Is there a spray or genetic engineered plants, etc.?
ReplyDeletethere are insecticides and some GMO plants on the market, but they tend to suffer many drawbacks such as being expensive, potentially destructive to the local environment, not completly effective, and in the case of insecticides they are usualy very hazardous chemicals that dont always kill all of the bugs, but when they do they kill the helpful bugs as well. also, insects evolve to be resistant to insecticides similar to the way bacteria do to antibiotics. basically, theres no perfect solution (yet) to these kinds of problems and thats why each breakthrough is big news
ReplyDelete