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Atta sexdens: Passing the Baton
Photo by João Burini
Website: João's Flickr Site
This is a great photo showing a foraging worker passing a cut leaf to another worker near the nest entrance, in the countryside of São Paulo - Brazil. The use of so-called bucket brigades to enhance the efficiency of foraging by these ants has been well-known. In many leafcutter species, a worker that cuts a leaf piece does not usually carry it all the way to the nest. Instead, chains of ants carry the cut leaves sequentially from one ant to the other, although many times it is asynchronous in that dropping the leaf piece for latter pickup is common.
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