s on honeydew producing pests to become apparent. Control in homes and yards include sanitation (e.g. removal of food scraps), closing points of entry to homes, and removing landscaping features that promote favorable microclimates - especially excess water sources.
Leaf-cutting Ants. These are commonly found in many New World tropical areas. In such areas, columns of these ants frequently can be seen crawling up the trunks of trees and cutting small discs from the leaves. In some areas these insects are so common that they become major agricultural pests.
Leaf cutting ants carrying leaf discs.
Some of these ants exhibit polymorphism (different form within a caste –in this case the workers) to an extreme. There are 4 different forms within the worker caste, namely the minima, minors, media and maxima. The minima are the smallest form of the adults and function to care for the brood (larvae and pupae) and fungal gardens. Media workers forage for and carry the leaf discs deep into their nests, where they are licked, cut into smaller pieces, dampened with an anal secretion and finally formed into a bed of moist pulp. The newly formed beds are then planted with fungi from established beds. As the fungus grows, it is harvested and fed to the larvae. Most leaf cutting ants are quite particular and typically cultivate and harvest only one species of fungus. Media workers continuously ‘weed out’ any alien species of fungi that infest their gardens. It is believed that a few species actually produce fungicidal substances from their salivary glands, which chemically aid in the weeding process. In some species, when the swarming queens leave the colony, they carry the strands of fungi with them in pouches below their heads. Once new colonies are begun, the strands are ‘planted’ to assure a new garden of the correct species of fungi. The maxima are the largest of the forms with enlarged heads and protruding mandible. These of course are the soldiers of the colony and function to protect the colony against intruders.
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