Who do you think the first farmers were? Before you answer, what if I told you that it is not the human farming that started first but ants that have taken to farming much before their human counterparts. Amazed? Yes, there are certain species of ants including the leaf cutter ants which maintain a fungal garden. And this they have been doing almost 60 million years ago. Theirs is a beautiful symbiotic relationship. For those of you for whom the term symbiosis is new, it is a relationship between two organisms in which both are benefited.
Each colony of these ants grows just one species of fungus and they are both interdependent on each other. These ants are not hunters, but farmers, and have evolved such that their nutritional needs are entirely dependent on the fungi that they grow. The fungus on their part has a relatively easy life compared to their wild counterparts who have a tough time adapting to environmental conditions during monsoon and dry periods.
These ants search for leaves cut them with their sharp mandibles (very much like how today’s farmers use their equipment) and carry these bits of leaves to their nest. This is not for feeding upon but as a base for their fungal garden. These bits of leaves are chewed and made soft and mushy with their own saliva. In addition, their poop juices are also added, which prevent other pathogenic fungi and microbes from taking over the colony. In fact, some of these ants have also been reported to form a relationship with a type of bacteria which provide the antibiotics needed to defend these fungal garden from other infections.
The fungi grow very happily in this mushy soft bed and in no time would have grown a lot to act as a source of food for their ant friends. The larvae and pupae are fed these foods and the entire colony thrives on the nutrients provided by their fungal friends. So, they take care of each other.
It has been studied that when a daughter queen ant leaves her maternal home to start off her own family, she eats some spores of this fungus as a stock and after mating, she chooses a place to establish her colony. She digs deep into the ground, lays her eggs, and spits out the fungus to make her own garden inside the earth. She nourishes it with the leaves she gathers and patiently waits for her garden to grow and her children to emerge from the eggs. This would start the beginning of a new colony of ants.
These leafcutter ants are not a favorite among human beings since they can strip a healthy plant of its leaves in no time and hence are considered, to be pests.
So now we know that much before we took to farming, this practice has been adopted by these tiny insects which had also evolved to defend their fungal crops. Three cheers to these tiny farmers!
To read more:
https://www.sciencemag.org/news/2015/06/watch-leafcutter-ants-use-leaves-grow-fungi
https://science.sciencemag.org/content/153/3736/587
https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/how-ants-became-worlds-best-fungus-farmers-180962871/
https://asunow.asu.edu/20181009-ants-invented-agriculture-long-humans-started-watching-ant-farms