Word.ws English Dictionary

fungus-growing ant

fungus-growing ant noun: any ant of the tribe Attini, which grow fungi in their ant colonies using food scraps, the fungi are then used to feed the colony.

Noun

fungus-growing ant (plural fungus-growing ants)

  1. Any ant of the tribe Attini, which grow fungi in their ant colonies using food scraps, the fungi are then used to feed the colony.
    • Fungus-growing ants (Attini) are in reality unique fungus-culturing insects.1966 August 5, NEAL A. WEBER, “Fungus-Growing Ants: A symbiotic relationship exists between an insect and a plant, involving an effective culturing technique.”, in Science.org
    • The fungus-growing ants are a New World group of > 200 species, all obligate symbionts with a fungus they use for food.(Can we date this quote?), “Fungus growing ants”, in AntWiki

Forms of fungus-growing ant

pluralfungus-growing ants

Origin of fungus-growing ant

From fungus + growing + ant.

Questions about fungus-growing ant

What does fungus-growing ant mean?
Fungus-growing ant means any ant of the tribe Attini, which grow fungi in their ant colonies using food scraps, the fungi are then used to feed the colony.
What part of speech is fungus-growing ant?
Fungus-growing ant is a noun.
What is the plural of fungus-growing ant?
The plural of fungus-growing ant is fungus-growing ants.

Words near fungus-growing ant in the dictionary

  1. fungus moth
  2. fungus moths
  3. Fungus Rock
  4. fungus weevil
  5. fungus weevils
  6. fungus-growing ant
  7. fungused
  8. funguses
  9. funguslike
  10. fungusproof
  11. fungusproofed

Source and license

Adapted from Wiktionary: fungus-growing ant (page history and authors). Text available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 license. Word.ws reformatted the entry and added links. Wiktionary data of 2026-09-02.

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