Leaf-cutting worker ants might look like they’d be helpless against an enemy soldier ant many times their size. But some of the smaller ants have a secret: Their entire body is coated with a thin but ...

This image highlights the whitish cuticular coating present on the ant Ac. echinatior. (Credit: T.R.S., in a study published by Nature Communications, via Courthouse News) PARIS (AFP) — A well-known ...

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Leaf-cutter ants are named for their Herculean feats: they chomp foliage and carry unwieldy pieces, like green flags many times their size, long distances to their colonies. There they chew up the ...

You have one of two relationships with leaf-cutter ants. First, you’re a nature-lover, visiting Costa Rica, as you always do, when it’s a little too cold at home. You’re enjoying the house you don’t ...

Leaf-cutter ant nests are biogeochemical hot spots where ants live and import vegetation to grow fungus. Metabolic activity and (in wet tropical forests) soil gas flux to the nest may result in high ...

Scientists at the Smithsonian Tropical Research Institute (STRI) in Panama discovered that carrying oversized loads limits the ability to perceive the trail in leafcutter ants, akin to blind spots ...