Bence Máté's Image

This line of fern-laden ants and their guards, their dainty bodies reflected in the water below, belies how resilient leaf-cutter ants are.

The female workers transport leaves to their nest from a radius of more than 100 metres (300 feet). Each load is chewed up and used as compost for cultivating fungi, the food they grow in their indoor garden. Earlier in the year, a tornado flattened the trees in the Costa Rican rainforest where Bence was photographing the ants, but their nest survived. And, as Bence witnessed one night, torrential rain did not stop them, though it washed many of them away. As soon as the rain stopped, the ants resumed their work, bypassing the potholes as they toiled to and fro.