The Small World of Leafcutter Ants By Kristen Earls Leafcutter ant. Naturalist E.O.Wilson offered that leafcutters have perfectly evolved to address every small need necessary for their survival over their 50 million years in existence.
Different ants are responsible for each step in the cultivation process.
According to their size, ants fulfill specific roles such as defenders of the colony, gardeners, foragers, and leafcutters. Incredibly, there are even tiny ants that straddle the backs of larger worker ants and defend them from carnivorous flies. No survival task is left unassigned. Researchers marvel at the complex form of sustainable agriculture that the ants practice. Careful not to overuse a single vegetation source, leafcutters gather fragments from different plants and trees, minimizing the vegetation's tendency to build up its defenses.