Leaf-cutter ants perform a series of specialized behaviors in preparing plant substrates for their symbiotic fungus. This process may be related to contamination of workers by substances such as insecticides, leading us to hypothesize that substances are spread among workers through behaviors they perform to grow the fungus. To test this hypothesis, we analyzed the behavioral acts of workers during the processing of the pellets by using a fat-soluble tracing dye, since the active ingredient that composes toxic baits, used for control of leaf-cutter ants, is fat-soluble. The frequencies of performed behaviors were recorded and the number of dyed workers was assessed after fungus cultivation. The most frequent behavior is allogrooming and corresponds to 45.87% of the contamination process in workers, followed by holding, licking, and cutting pellets, which account for 40.22% of the process. After pellet processing, the workers had their external and internal morphological structures marked by the tracing dye—93.75% and 79.25%, respectively. These results confirm that behaviors performed during fungus cultivation contribute to dispersing substances such as insecticides, causing the contamination of workers.

中文翻译：

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切叶蚁共生真菌培养过程中的脂溶性物质流。

切叶蚁在为共生真菌准备植物底物时会执行一系列特殊的行为。这个过程可能与工人被杀虫剂等物质污染有关，这使我们假设物质是通过工人生长真菌的行为在工人中传播的。为了检验这一假设，我们使用脂溶性示踪染料分析了工人在制粒过程中的行为，因为构成有毒诱饵的活性成分（用于控制切叶蚁）是脂溶性的。记录行为的频率，并在真菌培养后评估染色工人的数量。最常见的行为是修饰，这相当于工人污染过程的45.87％，其次是保持，舔和切粒，占整个过程的40.22％。颗粒加工后，工人的外部和内部形态结构以示踪染料为特征，分别为93.75％和79.25％。这些结果证实了在真菌培养期间进行的行为有助于分散诸如杀虫剂的物质，从​​而导致工人的污染。