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I have always thought that ants were a very cool species!  Every ant in the colony has it’s own special job, whether it’s workers that gather food and work to insure the survival of the colony, the queen who lays back and spits out babies all day or the males that make sure that the queen does her job (wink, wink), each ant is so busy doing their own “thing” that I really enjoy watching these little guys!

The Leaf Cutter Ants are especially cool. They live in the warmer climates in Central America and are named after the precise way that they cut the leaves from the trees. Oddly enough; they don’t use the leaves as a food source, they grind the leaves and use them a fertilizer for the fungus that they eat. The males in the leaf cutter ant colony are called drones, their particular job is to mate with queen, eat and die.

One species of Leaf Cutter Ants, the Mycocepurus Smithii, has been found recently and consists ONLY of females. They are located in the Amazon and have evolved into a species that reproduces through cloning, as their reproductive organs have almost completely disappeared. There are two very unique circumstances that occur because of the lack of males within the colony.  The lack of males provides the females with more energy to create elaborate forms of ant agriculture, however the down side is that since the colony are all clones of the queen ant, if a virus kills one ant it can just as easily wipe out an entire colony.

So, what this means is that, through evolution, this species can survive without males altogether! hmmm…I wonder who’s going to fix their cars?

~Wind

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