with gongylidia to feed colonies. This evolution of using gongylidia appears to have developed in the dry habitats of South America, away from the rainforests where fungus-farming evolved. About 10 million years later, leaf-cutting ants likely arose as active herbivores and began industrial-scaled farming. The fungus the ants grew, their cultivars eventually became reproductively isolated and co-evolved with the ants. These fungi gradually began decomposing more nutritious material like fresh plants. Shortly after attine ants began keeping their fungus gardens in dense aggregations, their farms likely began suffering from a specialized genus of Escovopsis mycopathogens. The ants evolved cuticular cultures of Actinomycetota that suppress Escovopsis and possibly other bacteria. These cuticular cultures are both antibiotics and antifungals. The mature worker ants wear these cultures on their chest plates and sometimes on their surrounding thoraces and legs as a biofilm. Behavior Mating Typically, one queen lives per colony. Every year after the colony is about three years old, the queen lays eggs of female and male alates, the reproductive ants that will pass on the genes of the queens. Before leaving the nest, queens stuff some of the fungus' mycelia in her cibarium. These winged males and queens then take their nuptial flights to mate high in the air. In some areas, species flights are synchronized with all local colonies' virgin royalty flying at the same time on the same day, such as Atta sexdens and Atta texana. Some species' queens mate with only one male, as in Seriomyrmex and Trachymyrmex, while some are known to mate with as many as eight or 10, such as Atta sexdens and many Acromyrmex spp. After mating, all males die, but their sperm stays alive and usable for a long time in the spermatheca, or sperm bank, of their mate, meaning that many ants father offspring years after their death. Colony foundation After their mating flights, queens cast off their wings and begin their descent into the ground. After creating a narrow entrance and digging straight down, she creates a small chamber. In here, she spits on a small wad of fungus and starts her colony's garden. After about three days, fresh mycelia are growing out of the fungus wad and the queen has lain three to six eggs. In a month, the colony has eggs, larvae, and often pupae surrounding the ever-growing garden. Until the first workers are grown, the queen is the