The Evolution of Agriculture in Ants

• DOI: 10.1126/science.281.5385.2034
• Publication Date: 2002-07-27T09:37:56Z
• Authors: Ulrich G. Mueller; Stephen A. Rehner; Ted R. Schultz
• Keywords: 0106 biological sciences; 2. Zero hunger; 01 natural sciences

Cultivation of fungi for food by fungus-growing ants (Attini: Formicidae) originated about 50 million years ago. The subsequent evolutionary history of this agricultural symbiosis was inferred from phylogenetic and population-genetic patterns of 553 cultivars isolated from gardens of “primitive” fungus-growing ants. These patterns indicate that fungus-growing ants succeeded at domesticating multiple cultivars, that the ants are capable of switching to novel cultivars, that single ant species farm a diversity of cultivars, and that cultivars are shared occasionally between distantly related ant species, probably by lateral transfer between ant colonies.