Two colonies of the leaf-cutting ant (Atta cephalotes L.) at Turrialba, Costa Rica, foraged on a restricted subset of the total available plant species, generally preferring introduced cultivars over native plants, but sampling many early successional species. Feeding preferences were related to elemental composition of leaves. Atta cephalotes preferred leaves with high concentrations of N and P, but with low concentrations of Mn and Al.
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Cory W. Berish (1986) studied this question.
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