In 1996, the year my partner and I got married, we went to see Microcosmos at the same little independent movie theatre where we had our first date on November 27th, 1993. The film is so well executed, with minimal narration, stunning microphotography, and hypnotic music, that the viewer is brought back to the wide-eyed, open-mouthed wonderment of childhood.
One very memorable scene in the film was of ants with their aphid cattle. Humans are not the only beings to develop and engage in farming and animal husbandry, by the way. Some ants engage in underground fungus farming, while others raise herds of domestic aphids whom they carefully tend for their 'milk', or honeydew.
What brought me to sharing this? Well, interestingly, it was the discovery of aphid farming ants in my own garden. Fortunately they have stayed well away (I think) from my tomatoes and pumpkin, choosing instead to set up their farms and tending to their herds on the fava bean plants I grew as a cover crop to enrich the soil. It turns out the aphids, black aphids in this case, prefer nitrogen rich foods.
Unfortunately my camera lacks manual focus, making it very difficult to focus on the ants and their aphid herds rather than the plants. After some experimentation, the ants came into fairly decent focus, but the aphids still look like blurry blobs.
While I find all this very fascinating, I am concerned about these ants migrating to and damaging other plants in my garden. If anyone has advice as to what to do to prevent them from damaging next year's garden, please share.
