Currie studies symbioses in attine ants, which culture fungus gardens for food, similar to how humans grow crops. These ants depend on antibiotic-producing bacteria to protect their gardens from a ...

The object of his interest is a nest of leafcutters, the showiest of the attine ants. Twenty feet up a nearby trumpet tree, the ants set upon freshly sprouted leaves, mandibles open, carving out ...

"Without this phylogeny, you could only speculate about the stepwise accretion of behavioral and ecological characters that led to some complicated evolutionary endpoint," said Schultz, who ...

Attine antsand beetles farm fungi, for example. Some vertebrates change their ecosystems to their benefit, most famously ...