ABSTRACT
Leaf-cutting ants of the genera Atta and Acromyrmex are characteristic polyphagous herbivores of the Neotropics, and in the tropical rain-forests of Central and South America, their activities have captured the attention of many researchers and naturalists since the early account of these ants by T. Belt. Most of the research on grass-cutting ants has been performed by a small group of researchers, with each working practically in isolation. The exclusion method is probably the best economic check, yet it requires large sample sizes due to the patchiness of harvest by the ants. Methods of estimating forage consumption can be divided into three kinds: counts of foraging workers, coupled with weights of the vegetation carried; calculation of the ratio of fresh fungal substrate to spent fungal substrate; and exclusion plots, in which colonies have been killed for comparison with productivity in plots in which ants are present.
