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Sticker of Desert leaf-cutter ant
Bug card No. 1336 of 4,939

Desert leaf-cutter ant

Acromyrmex versicolor
Eats: Fungus and mouldAntsDeserts and dry places6 legs

The desert leaf-cutter ant is a reddish brown ant from the deserts of North America. It is a little farmer. The ants carry leaves and dry grass home and use them to grow a garden of fungus, which they eat.

Lives in
The Colorado and Sonoran deserts of North America
Length
2 to 6 mm (0.08 to 0.24 in)
workers
Top speed
about 0.33 km/h (0.21 mph)
On foot, estimate
Can it hurt you?
Harmless

Many ants can sting or bite! Read about ant venom on Venom Wiki →

What does it eat?
The ants bring home leaves and dry grass, but they do not eat them. They grow fungus on them, and the fungus is their food.
For real!Photo of Desert leaf-cutter ant
Picture by April Nobile. CC BY 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons.

How big is it?

How long is it?

Desert leaf-cutter ant about 6 mm long (0.24 in)A grain of rice about 6 mm (0.24 in)A toy building brick about 3.2 cm (1.3 in)
small enough to sit on your fingernailcould run across a dinner table in 11 seconds

How big is Desert leaf-cutter ant compared to YOU?

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How fast is it?

cool stuff

Fun facts

1

Its nest looks like a big crater covered with bits of leaves.

2

One colony can have several queens, and each queen brings her own little piece of fungus to start a garden.

3

On very hot summer days the ants go out at night, when the ground is cooler.

4

If an ant gets too hot far from home, it presses its body against a cool rock to cool down.

5

The flying ants leave the nest to find mates only after a day of rain.

you asked

Most asked questions about Desert leaf-cutter ant

?What do desert leaf-cutter ants eat?

A fungus that they grow themselves on the leaves and grass they bring home.

?How big is a desert leaf-cutter ant?

The workers are 2 to 6 mm long. Some are big and some small, because they do different jobs.

For bug experts

Scientific name
Acromyrmex versicolor
Group
Ants
Family
Formicidae
Classification
Insecta > Hymenoptera > Formicidae
Lives on
North America
Also known as
Desert leafcutter ant

Where the facts come from

  1. Acromyrmex versicolor (Wikipedia, CC BY-SA 4.0): what it looks like, where it lives, what it eats, sizes and fun facts, retold in simple words.
  2. Picture by April Nobile. CC BY 4.0, Wikimedia Commons. The sticker of this bug is drawn from this picture.

If we got something wrong, sorry, we are bug fans, not a science journal. Tell us at [email protected] and we will fix it.

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