section_path: Domestication by insects/Leafcutter ants
section_name: Leafcutter ants
paragraph_text: Leafcutter ants
  
  The leafcutter ants are any of some 47 species of leaf-chewing ants in the genera Acromyrmex and 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 hyphae instead. The process of domestication by Atta ants, on the other hand, is complete; it took 30 million years.