Worker size: 2-12mm - Polymorph
Queen size: 12mm - Monogyne
Male size: 10mm
Colony size: 50,000

Natural nesting characteristics: Nest in soil. Can form big mounds. Often
found nesting in dryer locations than other leafcutter ants such as the Atta's.

Optimum keeping conditions;
Temperature: 25'C (23'C - 28'C)
Humidity: Nest ~95%, Outside 60%-80%(Not essential)

Formicarium styles;
- Soil/Peat filled tank/s, kept moist, often best to go for as large a tank as
possible for the colony and fungus grows very fast.
- Soil-less tank, often needs inventive way of maintaining very high
humidity and moderate ventilation for the fungus to grow, people often use
a damp layer of soil/peat at the bottom of the tank. Needs multple tanks
for rubbish and foraging. Risk of water-logging with no soil to absorb excess
moisture.

Food;
- Slices leaves and uses them to grow a fungus in the nest. Leaf fragments
are cleaned and chewed up before being added to the fungus. The ants
faeces are also used to fertilize the fungus.
- The fungus requires a constant temperature of around 25 degrees and
near 100% relative humidity to survive and grow.
- This species sometimes take dead insects back to the nest as well as
leaves, increasingly more as the colony grows.
- These ants also harbour bacteria on their skin that produce
substances containing antibiotics which are used to fight off other fungi that
try to feed on their own fungus.
- The ants squeeze parts of the fungus to draw out a protein and nutrient
rich liquid which is used to feed the larvae and queen.

Characteristics;
- Workers can be aggressive but most often are timid, the smaller workers
tend to be more agressive than the larger. Aggression increases towards the
nest.
- Relatively calm ants, slow walking, never flee from anything for more than
a few seconds before stoping to clean themselves.
- Often have a 'taming' effect on other ants, and sometimes on other
arthropods, like spiders. They will touch antennae with other large ants of
different species and both ants will just carry on about their own bussiness
as if from the same colony.

Interesting actions;
- When nest humidity was low they used soil to build a strange structure
overhanging the warm moat of water, as this soaked up moisture dry soil
was constantly added to the structure and wet soil was removed and took
back to the nest.
- Bridging the moat with a tangle of sticks and soil.
- Using dry chunks of clay to soak up water.
- When they outgrew their old tank, they started to moving soil from the
foraging tank to the nesting tank and using it to expand the nest upwards.
- I found an escaped leafcutter walking over a house-spider's web. When
the (big) house-spider came out to take it, the ant curled into a ball. The
spider stood over it for a few seconds without attacking it, before running
back into his hole, leaving the ant to walk off.