Editing Domestication (section)

=== Leafcutter ants ===

{{further|Leafcutter ant}}

The leafcutter ants are any of some 47 species of leaf-chewing ants in the genera ''[[Acromyrmex]]'' and ''[[Atta (genus)|Atta]]''. The ants carry the discs of leaves that they have cut back to their nest, where they feed the leaf material to the fungi that they tend. Some of these fungi are not fully domesticated: the fungi farmed by ''[[Mycocepurus smithii]]'' constantly produce spores that are not useful to the ants, which eat fungal [[hypha]]e instead. The process of domestication by ''Atta'' ants, on the other hand, is complete; it took 30 million years.<ref name="Shik Gomez Kooij 2016">{{cite journal |last1=Shik |first1=Jonathan Z. |last2=Gomez |first2=Ernesto B. |last3=Kooij |first3=Pepijn W. |last4=Santos |first4=Juan C. |last5=Wcislo |first5=William T. |last6=Boomsma |first6=Jacobus J. |title=Nutrition mediates the expression of cultivar–farmer conflict in a fungus-growing ant |journal=Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences |volume=113 |issue=36 |date=6 September 2016 |pmid=27551065 |pmc=5018747 |doi=10.1073/pnas.1606128113 |pages=10121–10126 |doi-access=free |bibcode=2016PNAS..11310121S }}</ref>