Ant Farmers Cultivate a 66-Million-Year Fungus, Earlier Than Humans
Leafcutter ants don’t eat the leaves they haul home; they feed them to an underground fungus, Leucoagaricus gongylophorus, which the ants then eat via nutrient-rich gongylidia. This farming relationship began about 66 million years ago and predates human agriculture by tens of millions of years, featuring a complex caste system, pathogen defenses with antibiotic-producing bacteria, and a queen that carries a fungal inoculum to start new farms.