Ants beat humans as expert ‘farmers’ and, according to a study published on Thursday in the journal Science, these insects have been growing their own food for 66 million years, long before the arrival of the any human being as a species.
66 million years ago, an asteroid hit the Earth, causing a great recession around the globe, but creating ideal conditions for the development of fungi, which were used by the ants that survived this cataclysm to to feed
To reach this discovery, a group of scientists from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History (United States) obtained genetic sequences from samples of 475 different species of fungi (288 of them cultivated by ants) and 276 different species of ants (208 of which grow mushrooms).
With all this data, they developed an evolutionary chart that shows that ants and fungi have been connected for 66 million years, more or less since the asteroid hit the Earth, at the end of the Cretaceous.
This accident filled the atmosphere with dust and debris, which blocked the sun and prevented photosynthesis for years, causing half of the plant species on Earth to become extinct at the time that.
However, this disaster was an opportunity for fungi, which thrived by eating the dead plant material that covered the ground.
“Dinosaurs didn’t do very well at the end of the Cretaceous, but fungi had a big day,” said one of the authors, Ted Schultz, an entomologist at the Smithsonian who has spent 35 years studying evolution. an ant
The researchers believe that the fungi that were growing during this period were feeding on the decaying leaves, which brought them into close contact with the ants.
These insects, in turn, took advantage of the abundance of fungi for food and were still dependent on them when their lives passed into extinction.
The new work also shows that it took 40 million years more for ants to develop more advanced agriculture: they were cultivating fungi for food as early as 27 million years ago.
“Ants domesticated these fungi in the same way that humans domesticated crops,” Schultz said.
In South America, for example, researchers believe that ants took fungi from rainforests and moved to drier places, separating them from their wild ancestral populations.
Once alone, these fungi would have been completely dependent on ants to survive in dry conditions, laying the foundation for the sophisticated agricultural system that leafcutter ants have. current practice.
Researchers have organized nearly 250 different species of mushroom-producing ants in the Americas and the Caribbean based on the four agricultural systems they use.
Leafcutter ants are among those who use the most advanced strategy, known as positive agriculture: they harvest pieces of new vegetation to feed their fungi, while those fungi feed the ants.
2024-10-04 07:12:00
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