Worker attine ants carefully tend the fungus and forage for substrates to use as nutrients to support its growth. In exchange, the fungus serves as the primary food source for the colony. Functionally, this is similar to human agriculture, but instead of growing plants, the ants grow fungus. The foraging activity of these ants is so prodigious that they are one of the most dominant herbivores of Neotropical ecosystems. Pseudonocardia are members of the Actinobacteria, a group well known for their ability to produce potent antibiotics. Indeed, the majority of antibiotics used in human medicine are derived from Actinobacteria. So, it is perhaps not surprising that through natural selection fungus‐growing ants “discovered” the benefit of obtaining antibiotics from these bacteria. This relationship, however, not one‐sided, as Pseudonocardia benefits from its symbiosis with the ants. Studies indicate that over their long evolutionary history, attine ants have been continuously threatened with famine induced by Escovopsis infections of their fungus garden; to help mitigate this threat, the ants have been employing antibiotic‐producing bacteria for millions of years. The fungus garden serves as the external digestive system for the ants; the garden converts leaves into energy for the ants. It has long been assumed that nutrient provisioning to the ants from the garden is only mediated through the ants' fungal mutualist. Through the formation of symbiotic associations with their fungus and bacteria, the ants obtain access to the metabolic capacity of these microbes, including the capacity to degrade plant biomass and produce antibiotics, respectively.