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Ants learned to farm fungi during a mass extinction

Ants learned to work with fungi back in a world where only fungi could thrive.

This reaches the peak of sophistication in the leafcutter ants, which cut foliage and return it to feed their fungi, which in turn form specialized growths that are harvested for food. Current models suggest that there was so much dust in the atmosphere after the impact that set off the mass extinction that photosynthesis shut down for nearly two years, meaning minimal plant life. The researchers suggest that the climate changes that accompanied the transition to the Oligocene included a drying out of the tropical Americas, where the fungus-farming ants had evolved.

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