Atta ant farm

Your hand: change the farm and see what the ants do.

The real forest

Leafcutter ants are the Amazon's gardeners: a big colony digs out tonnes of soil and can harvest about as much vegetation as a cow. They need standing forest, and the Amazon is losing it. This farm is a simulation, but the forest isn't.

Help protect it

These links take you to each organisation's own site. This site takes no cut and never sees your details; it only counts how many times each link is clicked.

Rainforest TrustBuys and protects threatened tropical forest with local partners. Amazon FrontlinesSupports Indigenous peoples defending their rainforest territories. Amazon ConservationProtects forest in the Andes-Amazon and runs the MAAP deforestation monitoring project. Rainforest Foundation USWorks with Indigenous communities to secure their land rights in the Amazon.

Watch the forest

Satellites track the Amazon's tree cover. See where it's being lost, almost as it happens.

Global Forest WatchInteractive maps of tree cover loss and deforestation alerts. Global Forest ChangeThe University of Maryland's satellite map of forest loss since 2000. MAAPReports on Amazon deforestation hotspots from satellite imagery.

Meet the ants

Open resources on leafcutter ants, and a way to add your own sightings if you're ever in their range.

AntWiki: Atta sexdensBiology, range and references for the species in this farm. AntWebHigh-resolution specimen photos of the world's ants. iNaturalistReal sightings mapped by naturalists, and a way to record your own.

The science behind the farm

What the simulation is based on. SCIENCE.md lists what follows the research, what's an estimate, and what's simplified. The whole simulation is one readable file: sim.js.

Hölldobler & Wilson (2011). The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct. W. W. Norton.
Wilson (1980). Caste and division of labor in leaf-cutter ants. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. doi
Bonabeau, Theraulaz & Deneubourg (1996). The fixed threshold model of division of labour in insect societies. Proc. R. Soc. B. doi
Currie, Mueller & Malloch (1999). The agricultural pathology of ant fungus gardens. PNAS. doi
Currie et al. (1999). Fungus-growing ants use antibiotic-producing bacteria to control garden parasites. Nature. doi
Feener & Moss (1990). Defense against parasites by hitchhikers in leaf-cutting ants. Behavioral Ecology and Sociobiology. doi
Powell & Clark (2004). A subterranean army ant established as a predator of mature leaf-cutting ant colonies. Insectes Sociaux. doi
Hansen et al. (2013). High-resolution global maps of 21st-century forest cover change. Science. doi