Close up of leaf cutter ants cutting (from below)

Movie 1. View from below of laboratory colony ants, Atta cephalotes, cutting leaves. In off-vein regions, the surface of the leaf opposite the ant tends to be cut by the proximal blade of the distal tooth (first tooth) as the tooth rides along the surface. In the first three clips, the ants are cutting Rubus armeniacus leaves (approximately 0.08 mm or 0.14 mm without and with the trichome [hair] mat), in the last 2 clips the ants are cutting approximately 0.25 mm thick Prunus lusitanica leaves. While the thicknesses of the leaves are sometimes greater than the distance between the two distal teeth for some of these foragers, these foragers tend to be smaller than wild colony foragers (see Figure 4 of the paper). The distance between the first and second tooth of an average sized wild colony cutter was about 0.15 mm, so the approximately 0.13 mm thick O. macrantha leaves would have been cut mainly by the V-blade between the first and second tooth. For veins, a sawing action is employed. Movies were made using a Nikon Coolpix 4500 mounted on a Zeiss dissection microscope. The frame rate has not been altered to speed up or slow down action in any of the three movies. Copyright Robert Schofield, rmss@conch.uoregon.edu