In the few studied cases, the foundress ant queen carries in her mouth a pellet of fungus from the origin nest that she uses to start her own garden. This mode of propagation has suggested the long-standing hypothesis that the fungi of attine ants are ancient clones that have strictly coevolved with their hosts. The authors report these patterns suggest that fungus-growing ants succeeded at domesticating multiple cultivars, that the ants are capable of switching to novel cultivars, that single ant species farm a diversity of cultivars, and that cultivars are shared occasionally between distantly related ant species, probably by lateral transfer between ant colonies. The evolution of agriculture in ants.
Mutualism is a type of symbiosis in which both participants receive benefits from the association.
In general, a variety of plant produced by selective breeding, i.e., a distinct subspecies that does not occur naturally in the wild.