Look down on any evening walk and you will cross one: a moving ribbon of ants a few centimetres wide, each carrying a cut piece of leaf several times its own size, all heading the same way.
Where you’ll see it
Gardens, roadsides and forest floor everywhere on this coast. The nests are large mounds of excavated soil, sometimes metres across, and the trails from them can run a long way.
What to know
Leafcutters are farmers. The leaves feed a fungus in underground chambers and the fungus feeds the colony. That is why they take the tender new growth: it makes the best compost. A colony can strip a favourite shrub in a night and be gone by morning.
They do not bite unless handled and they are not interested in your house. The only real war is over the garden, and the ants have been at it longer.
