Zompopas story

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My history begins in my moth er’s colony. Eventhough in the colony working ants are always being bor n, we, the queens, and ou r male brothers, born just once a year at the same time.

We are born by the thou sands and since we are b abies we are fed with lots of food because we are bigger an d stronger than the rest of the ants . We are treated as quee ns and kings because we are the ones that can reproduce, and thus it is our responsibility to propagate and perpetuate our species.

Birth of the queen

Leaving the colony

After me and my sisters are born, we are groomed by the colony’s workers until we are fully developed, which includes the strengthening of our wings. Yes, we are flying ants! And this is how we leave our colony‌flying!

Males are also going to leave right behind us, but it is going to be hard for them to reach us‌Only the strongest one will accomplish this!

There is an important detail which we should never forget! Our precious fungus which we feed upon, without it we cannot start a new colony. Before we leave, we take a piece of the fungus, the size of a pinhead, and we place it in a special compartment in our mandibles.

And so, we leave our beloved mother colony and we fly towards our destiny.

Nuptial Flight

The nuptial flight is like our wedding night, the moment in which mating takes place.

We fly high, where nobody can see us, forcing the males to work hard to catch us. This ensures that only the strongest will be the fathers of the new zompopa generations.

Up there in the sky, I have been fertilized by 3 males and some of my sisters even by five and six. Maybe this may sound weird, but don’t forget that we only mate once in our lives, and during this night we need to accumulate enough genetic material to be able to produce up to 200 million eggs.

Yes! 200 million eggs! Being queen is not an easy job. We live up to 20 years, and most of that time we spent it laying eggs.

But s‌ e l a m e h t n tha r e i k c u l ptial u e n r r u o we a r e t t af s u e j w e i d d n u s o w r o g l l e e o th t g n i d The poor f n e c ut s b e d , e n e m h a h W s . a sted t is u I a h ‌ x d e e r , e t t h t g a nts c e fli s r a p m e e h h t t f e eds o ecom r b d l n l i u h w e y e e s h can ars, d: T e a y e d y n y l a e m r i t r fo en t s t o n n a e f r o a s y d e n th usa e. o m h t f o d n e a d i s s d n i pt e k e r e of thousan w s e gen r i e h t e s u a bec

Founding of the new colony When our voyage through the skies is completed, an even harder task is up hand: to establish a new colony! From the air we select a proper spot to land, for instance we like cleared areas in the middle of the forests!

Over 90% of our sisters do not survive past 3 months, victims of diseases, predators and other threats, including human beings, which in certain countries enjoy cooking and eating us!

I imagine what you are thinking, that after all the male’s life is not so bad, they have fun and that’s it, meanwhile all the work is left for us to do.

It is ok, we are strong!

Indeed we are!

What we first do is to dig a tunnel of about 20 to 30 cm, and create an underground chamber where we place our precious fungus. Once the fungus is expelled, we seal the tunnel and get ready for 2 months of solitude and isolation. Since day one I start laying eggs, thus officially starting my new house!

First days after founding and the Queen’s tasks

The first days are always the hardest, after day one I am taking care of my eggs, and a few later I will have my first larvae.

I can’t feed from my fungus, because I am still weak, and can’t risk damaging it. If the fungus dies there is no hope of survival for my colony.

Then, how can I avoid starving to death? Well, my organism degrades and converts my strong wing muscles into energy, because I won’t need to fly again. Also, I consume 90% of the eggs I lay, because I won’t be able to groom them all.

I am also in charge of my babies, since I have to feed and care my first larvae. I also tend to my fungus garden, which requires a lot of effort from my behalf.

After one month my first daughters will be born, and all of them will be females! Each one of them comes from an egg fertilized with sperm kept in my sperm bank, a kind of long term reservoir of genetic material which I received from the males during the nuptial flight. In a few years, when the colony is mature I will leave some eggs unfertilized, because that is how males are born. The poor fellows only have half my genes, making them useful for two things: eating and mating.

Colony Development: Stages of Development.

My work gets easier as my first daughters are born. After 3 weeks the larvae become pupas, metamorphosis takes place, and the first ants are produced. These feed from the fungus, and also begin to take care of the colony’s chores.

The new workers finally open a hole to the outside and take care of collecting the first ant fragments, which will be used to cultivate my fungus garden.

Not all the eggs I lay are viable. Because of this, my daughters feed me those as well as pieces of the fungus. This keeps me healthy and strong. My daughters will take care of me the rest of my life, letting me become an egg-laying machine for the next 20 years of my life!

Castes and their respective tasks

In the beginning, all of my daughters are the same size, about 3mm. They are small enough to cultivate the fungus and consume part of it, bur large enough to cut leaves and bring them to the colony. But after 6 months I will start having different sized daughter, each specialized in a specific task. Let me introduce them to you!

Maximal workers My loyal army!

-They are my largest daughters. They can weigh as much as 200 times more than my smallest children.

-They have big mandibles that can cut human skin as easily as they cut through leaves.

- Most of the time the stay inside the colony, and they venture outside the colony when danger appears, like in insect attacks, ant-eaters and annoying humans.

Medium workers My foragers!

- They are in charge of collecting leaves that will serve to culture my fungus gardens.

- They are the best known of my daughters, because they march in lines across the forest carrying fragments of leaves in their mandibles.

- These plant materials are taken to the colony to be cut in smaller and smaller pieces, which will be delivered to the minimal workers.

Minimal workers My dear farmers!

- They are the smallest and most abundant, amongst them there are different sizes: - The first ones prepare a paste of mixture to cultivate the fungus, combining leaf fragments and their feces.

- The smallest of the smallest take the paste and place it in new areas were the fungus will be cultivated, in order to expand the garden.

- These fellows are in charge of caring the garden, removing foreign agents and letting the colony know if there is an infection.

Besides their size, my daughters are also divided according to their age.

The youngest of my daughters spend most of their times doing tasks inside the colony, which is the safest place. The eldest on the other hand do the chores which are more hazardous and thus have a greater chance to die. This is justified, because even if all are precious to me, I can’t risk the younglings which have their whole lives ahead of them!

For instance: My eldest minimal workers become forager riders. They accompany them in leaf collecting and on the way back they ride in the leaves to protect my foragers from parasite insects who want to deposit their eggs in their heads.

Look for the rider ants next time you find my zompopa sisters in your way!

Also, elder medium workers are in charge of dealing with invasions from small insects such as other ants, as well as waste management. This last one presents a risky task due to the chance of acquiring deadly infections.

Harvesting, Foraging.

Being a forager is not an easy thing. The roundtrip to the colony done by one of my daughters is equivalent to a human trekking a distance of 50 km at a speed of 400 meters per minute, while carrying a weight of 250 kg. Not even the long marching done by the Roman legionnaires are equal to the journeys of my foragers.

My foragers are well known across Costa Rica and most part of the Americas. They leave a long and marked trail.

We are no fools when it comes to exploring, my daughters can mark their way to a tree with quality leaves pretty well. We accomplish this by using potent chemicals called pheromones. With 1 mg of our pheromones we can mark a trail for my workers to follow the equivalent of going around the Earth three times.

We rarely eat all of the leaves of a tree, actually we trim them and let them regenerate so afterwards we can go back to them.

In the tree tops my daughters are capable of signaling the best leaves by means of vibrations that alert their sisters. They cut the leaves based on their sizes and use their legs to measure the fragment that they can carry. Once their cargo is sized, they cut the leaves with their powerful mandibles, which are similar to an electric knife, because they vibrate while they cut.

The next is to bring the leaf pieces back to our home!

Culture and maintenance of the fungus garden

Me and my fungus, my fungus and I…when two species live as close as we do, we have to learn to communicate.

My fungus is capable of communicating my minimal workers when it feels alright, when it is uncomfortable, and even can tell them when plant material is high quality or has a negative effect on its health.

My workers are in constant awareness over the fungus garden, trying to keep it as clean as possible. They control the population of living beings growing in it, favoring beneficial bacteria and eliminating any invading parasite. They communicate with the foragers and indicate them the quality of the leaves they are introducing in the colony, and if these are causing any damage to the fungus.

That is why it is so common to see the minimal workers extracting fragments of foreign fungus from the colony, or probing the garden with their antennae looking for damaged sites to repair.

For us, hygiene is very important!

My daughters keep my garden extremely clean, and to do so they create dumpsters for all that wastes it produces, avoiding discarded material accumulation.

The oldest ants in the colony take care of this task, because it carries a high percentage of mortality due to disease contagion.

Waste materials are placed in special chambers, but certain species, like my cousins Atta colombica have developed waste management systems which are dumpsters outside the colony. These waste mounds are known to humans because of their ant-repelling activities. Workers never touch these mounds, because it is dangerous, and so to throw away their trash, they climb branches and from these highpoints they hurl their load.

Dump Chambers

Mature Colony

Things around here are growing at an incredible rate! A colony just like mine, of approximately 8 years and with 4-5 million inhabitants can occupy a space of about 20m3, an area of 60m2 and could reach depths of about 8 meters. In my colony we have around 2000 excavated chambers, of which 250 contain fungus gardens.

To build my kingdom it was necessary to remove up to 40 tons of soil. This is in human terms the equivalent of building the Great Wall of China! Yes, we leaf-cutters are that amazing!

Homes as big as mine lead to ventilation issues, this is because high amount of CO2 tend to accumulate due to our respiration as well as the fungus’s. But we have developed an aeration system in which by using a large number of tunnels and elevated towers, fresh air is captured, which in turn allows a gaseous exchange in the inside of the colony.

Because of this, the temperature inside the colony is always nice, ideal for the growth of our fungus.

After a long journey, my colony is finally complete. Once a year we shall produce males and new queens, so they can start their very own adventure and my species continues to expand!

Design & diagramation by DISEÑO Y COMUNICACIÓN J Y D S.A. dicom@ice.co.cr Tel.(506) 2280-8886