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The Leaf-Cutting Ants - Online Term Paper

The Leaf-Cutting Ants

One of the most little known species of ants in North America is the leaf-cutter ant. This is mainly because it lives in tropical environments and it is not aggressive to animals or humans if not disturbed. The leaf cutting ant is a social insect. Alone the ant is virtually helpless but with the colony it can be a thing feared by animal and human alike. have a very important role in the tropical forest. They create and manipulate the environment around them. They also can do major damage.
The leaf-cutting or fungus-growing ants are distributed from northern Texas to central Argentina. These ants are injurious since they cut the green vegetation from trees, shrubs and crops, and carry it ...

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ant is believed to cause a total yearly loss of $5 million in the United States (unison services. 1998).
There are about 9,500 named species of ants. These ants are divided into 16 sub families and 300 genera, all which belong to the family called Formicidae, the family of ants (Hoyt. 1996). The leaf cutting ant belongs to the genus called Atta. There are fifteen different species of Atta and all are limited to the new world (Holldobler & Wilson, 1994).
The leaf-cutter ant looks pretty much like a regular ant in North America except that it is a little bigger than most ants. Looking at the ant in the untrained eye a person usually perceives that it is a primitive organism. Looks can be deceiving. The leaf-cutter ant is a complex superorganism unique social, environmental, and food gathering behavior.
The anatomy of the leaf-cutter ant is pretty simple.

It has a one segment "waist" (pedicel) between thorax and abdomen. Sharp spines on waist and backward from head. Antennae ...

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picks up a burden of 300 kilograms or more and speeds back to the nest at 24 kilometers an hour – hence 4 minute miles (Holldobler & Wilson, 1994).

The queen is the largest of the ants and can reach length larger than ½ an inch and her life span can be 10 years or more (Smith. 1997). The queen has wings and when she decides to leave the nest she carries a small pellet of mycelium (the fungus) in a special pocket on her head. When a new nest is found, the mycelium is used to start to grow food again. The colony growth is slow at first but soon proceeds rapidly and reaches maturity in about 5 years.
The nests of the leaf cutting ant can get up to 200 square meters in length and 6 ...

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PAPER DETAILS

Added: 10/14/2006 06:40:24 PM
Category: Science & Nature
Type: Premium Paper
Words: 3880
Pages: 15

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