Ants know how to produce antibiotics

An ant in the Americas uses a variety of antibiotics to kill harmful fungi and bacteria for their food.

Ants cut leaves Acromyrmex octospinosus. (Photo: ncsu.edu).

Sciencedaily said that ant cutting leaves Acromyrmex octospinosus is endemic to southern America, Central America and South America. This ant species lives in large flocks, has the most complex social organization in the animal world in numbers up to several million individuals. Ants and some other insects have a habit of growing mushrooms.

Dr. Matt Hutchings, a biologist at the University of East Anglia in the UK, and his colleagues studied the mushroom-growing behavior of ants cutting leaves from the three colonies in Trinidad and Tobago. Mushrooms are food for larvae and queen ants.

They found that ants use many antibiotics at the same time to kill harmful fungi and unwanted bacteria in the mushroom growing area for food . Although this ant has been studied for over 100 years, this is the first evidence that they use many antibiotics. These antibiotics are made by actinomycete bacteria that live symbiotic on the body. Scientists have isolated actinomycete bacteria from leaf ants.

' We have found a new antifungal compound. This finding opens up the prospect of an antibiotic that helps treat infections caused by fungi in humans. Thus, ants cut leaves and other insects capable of producing useful antibiotics in medicine, 'Dr. Hutchings said.

According to Hutchings, the interesting thing is that ants not only know agricultural cultivation in front of humans but also find a way to kill fungi by combining natural antibiotics. This may also be a way to control the proliferation of drug-resistant bacteria or viruses.

The study was funded by the British Medical Research Council and published in BMC Biology.