I know about these ants…. It may seem odd to devote an entire blog entry to ants, but these ants are a little different from other kinds....They run an elaborate mushroom farm. How do they do it? With an established division of labor akin to the federal workforce, some of them (they’re all called Atta colombica, or leaf-cutter ants) climb high into the treetops to slice off corners of leafblades…Then they slide hastily down the trunk gripping an incredibly bulky burden on their backs. Although you might think these leaf blades would make a tasty meal for their queen, these ants are instead carting this long assembly line of greenery underground to pass it off to the minims, smaller ants in the colony that take the leaves and carefully feed a fungus on which the whole colony depends. Dependent on every delivery of fresh leafy greens from the ants, the fungus grows and reproduces until it becomes a mass of food for the queen and workers in the ant colony. In fact, the ants have even developed a sensitivity to detect when certain leaves are toxic to the fungus…and then they avoid them.
With such a high-tech farm operation in place, it looks like neither the ants or the fungus can live without each other. But…perhaps it reaches even further than that. A bacteria living in the ants, known as Actinobacteria, secretes an antibiotic that protects the fungus crop from a devastating parasite. The bacteria can’t live without the ants…And the ants and the fungus can’t live without the bacteria.
In the midst of this tiny yet giant operation of insects and bacteria….It may seem as though the trees are getting the raw end of the deal…But are they? Looming high above the forest floor, the trees need healthy soil in which to anchor so that they can take up nutrients and water, all the while gripping to the ground so they are not toppled by wind. If these ants (and a plethora of other insects and one-celled critters) were not constantly tunneling through the soil, then the ground would be similar to a giant block of concrete. The network of holes and passageways they create allow water to seep through the soil surface and eventually to the massive tree roots, which can penetrate the ground much more easily when it is not concrete. And when these ants die or excrete, they add all kinds of organic health food to the soil for the tree roots to feed on. I’m sure one could write forever about how the tree then provides a nesting place for the parakeet and fruit for the squirrels, which then plant the seeds for the tree, and so it goes indefinitely.
So what does happen when you tug one of these things out of the web? More on this in a later entry…But for now we know that everything in the natural world is rather seamlessly connected.
Perhaps this provides a bit of a picture of the Body of Christ as it was intended. Since we were created to be united, it’s when we decide we don’t need each other or we disconnect, that things go awry. Yes, we all contribute something completely different to the whole, but when we stay there and decide to contribute and depend on the others, we become part of something so much bigger than ourselves. The ants, after all, are only ants…But when they do what they do best and remain a part of things, suddenly you have a magnificent forest.
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