 |  |  |  |
 |  |  |
A few species of fungus-growing ants are known to have several queens in each nest. Such polygyny is found among both the higher attines (in a few species of Acromyrmex and Atta) and the lower attines such as Mycocepurus. Most fungus-growing ants, however, have only a single queen in each nest. She lays all the eggs which will develop into all the workers and reproductives that the ant colony will produce throughout its life. This can be tens or hundreds of millions in some colonies of Atta. The queen spends her entire life in the fungus garden. The picture to the right shows an Atta queen sitting on her fungus garden. It is here that she lays her eggs which are cared for by specialised nurse workers. After the eggs hatch into larvae, they start to feed on the gongylidia produced by the fungus. The larvae develop and pupate in the fungus garden and finally emerge as adult ants, either sterile female workers or winged reproductives (males and new queens). The picture below shows a winged male and a winged new queen of Atta. Little is known of reproduction in fungus-growing ants, particularly the lower attines, but assuming that they behave like other ants, then when conditions are right, the reproductives will leave the nest and join in a mating swarm with reproductives from other nests of ants of the same species from the same area. |  |
A leaf-cutter ant queen may live ten or twenty years, making her one of the longest lived insects | Before leaving the ant nest, the new queens collect a small amount of the fungus from their colony in their mouths. The new queens will mate with one or more males, after which all the males will die. Those new queens that succeed in mating and are not eaten by the many predators that gather around mating swarms will try to from new colonies. The queen will shed her wings and burrow into the ground. In the genus Atta, she will break down her wing muscles and convert them into the energy and resources she needs to produce the first brood of worker ants. In the other fungus-growing ants, the queen must leave the new nest from time to time to collect food for her fungus. A new fungus growing ant colony will slowly develop, using the fungus that the queen has carried from the colony where she developed. The picture below shows a young queen of Acromyrmex sitting on the fungus garden for which she has collected leaf-fragments. | |
 | ||
| | |
| | | |