Empires of the undergrowth play as leaf cutter

Ant colonies are emergent systems whose challenges are addressed not by top down command and centralized control, but through a network of diverse inputs that connect and collaborate. Leafcutter ants are fungus farmers, and these exacting conditions are essential for the growth of their crop-but they also create ideal grounds for invading microbes.ДЄnts do not have the option to socially distance, but over the course of evolution they have crafted their own solutions to some of the very problems we encounter today.

Like us, the ants engineer their own climate, although unlike us, this engineering is not harmful to them or to the larger ecosystem. The colony is a warm, humid, underground metropolis in which the atmospheric balance of oxygen to carbon dioxide is precisely controlled. Wilson called вЂњthe most complex social creatures other than humans.вЂќ They live in massive colonies with up to eight million members that can spread over thirty square feet and be twelve feet deep.

To begin to answer this question, consider leafcutter ants, which eminent biologist E.O. How do they prevent deadly microbes from blooming into pandemics? The features of city life-dense urban environments, frequent physical contact, fixed homes used day after day-have countless advantages, but as we have witnessed with the Covid-19 pandemic, they make it much easier for disease to spread to all members of a society, whether anthropoid or arthropod.ДЄnts have lived in crowded colonies for millions of years. As our cities grow larger and humanity becomes a predominantly urban species, we live more and more like ants do. We have compared ourselves to ants, in our stories and fables, for thousands of years.

Empires of the undergrowth play as leaf cutter