Every spring, throughout Texas and most of the southern half of the U.S., soon after new growth erupts from leaf buds, the acrobat ants sally forth from their winter nests. Then, depending on whether or not they cultivated a winter population of mealybugs or aphids in their nests, they either begin herding that extant population, or begin to seek out external populations of local mealybugs and aphids to domesticate. [...]