Bugün öğrendim ki: Yaprak kesici karıncalar yaprak yemezler, yapraklarını yiyecek olarak kullandıkları bir mantarı (Lepiotaceae mantarı) yetiştirmek için kullanırlar ve bu da onları dünyanın en yaşlı çiftçileri yapar.

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[](/ASM/media/Article- Images/2017/September/leaf- cutter-ant-carries-a-leaf-9-26-17.png)Figure 1. The leaf cutter ant carries leaves home to feed their fungus crop. [Source](https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Leafcutter_ants.jpg). Ants learned to farm 50 million years ago, way before humans did. Their crop of choice? Fungus Meet the leaf-cutter ant. These ants carve out pieces of leaves and carry them back home (Figure 1). But the ants don't eat the leaves themselves—they feed it to _Lepiotaceae_ fungus they cultivate in their nests. The fungus breaks down plant polymers that the ant digestive enzymes can't, making the plants nutritionally available to the ant hosts when the ants eat the farmed fungus (Figure 2). This ant-fungus symbiosis is thought to have originated in the Amazon basin, and since then has diversified into over 250 species of ants that inhabit the Americas. The fungus is the only food source for the leaf-cutter ant. If the fungus fails to thrive, the colony can bid farewell to life, and without their cultivators, the fungus also does not survive. In an [interview with Smithsonian Magazine](http://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants- became-worlds-best-fungus-farmers-180962871/), Ted Schultz, curator of ants at the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History says the fungus is “like a lot of our crops. We cultivated things that are so highly modified that they exist in forms no longer found in the wild.” Similarly, the leaf-cutter ant's fungal crop is only found in association with the ants.