By V. Todd Miller
:LSU AgCenter
Humans began farming thousands of years ago, but a new study co-authored by two LSU professors says ants had us beat by millions of years.
LSU AgCenter mycologist Vinson P. Doyle and LSU Department of Biological Sciences professor Brant C. Faircloth lent their combined expertise to a study led by Smithsonian Institution entomologist Ted Schultz, which demonstrates that ants began farming fungi after an asteroid struck Earth 66 million years ago, causing a global mass extinction.