Old MacDonald was an Ant
She knew about manure, herbicides, weeding, and—maybe—raiding neighbor’s garden
Domesticating crops from the wild at least several times and sharing cultivated varieties, ants developed farming about 50 million years before people.
References:
Diamond, J. 1998. Ants, crops and history. Science 281(Sept. 25):1974.
______. 1997. Guns, Germs and Steel. New York: W.W. Norton & Company.
Hölldobler, B., and E.O. Wilson. 1994. Journey to the Ants. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Mueller, U.G., S.A. Rehner, and T.R. Schultz. 1998. The evolution of agriculture in ants. Science 281(Sept. 25):2034.
Further Readings:
1996. Ant and mushroom farms. Economist 340(July 6):70.
1995. Plants make the most of visiting ants. Science News 147(June 17):381.
1994. Ancient fungal farmers. Science News 146(Dec. 24&31):431.
Hölldobler, B., and E.O. Wilson. 1990. The Ants. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Sources:
Jared Diamond
University of California, Los Angeles
School of Medicine
Los Angeles, CA 90095-1751Ulrich G. Mueller
University of Maryland, College Park
Department of Biology
College Park, MD 20742Ted R. Schultz
Smithsonian Institution
National Museum of Natural History
Department of Entomology, MRC 165
Washington, DC 20560From Science News, Vol. 154, No. 21, November 21, 1998, p. 334. Copyright Ó 1998 by Science Service.
11/21/98
copyright 1998 ScienceService
