Euprenolepis
awild | August 6, 2008
Euprenolepis procera
(photo by Witte and Maschwitz)
This is cool. A new paper by Volker Witte and Ulrich Maschwitz details a previously unknown behavior for ants: nomadic fungivory. Here's the cite and the abstract:
Witte, V. and U. Maschwitz. 2008. Mushroom harvesting ants in the topical rain forest. Naturwissenschaften, online early.
Abstract: Ants belong to the most important groups of arthropods, inhabiting and commonly dominating most terrestrial habitats, especially tropical rainforests. Their highly collective behavior enables exploitation of various resources and is viewed as a key…