For ~50 million years, fungus-growing ants have been farming fungus for food. The most highly derived of these ants are the conspicuous leaf-cutters that cut and forage for leaves, which they use to grow their fungal cultivar.  This system is one of the most complex symbioses described, consisting of four mutualists and two pathogens. The evolutionary success of the leaf-cutters is reflected in their wide geographic range (USA to Argentina) and their massive colony sizes; a single colony can contain upwards of 3 million workers and harvest ~400 Kg (dry weight/year) of leaf material to cultivate their fungus.  A hallmark of this ant-fungus mutualism is its ability to deconstruct lignincellulose in leaf biomass, a process of particular relevance for bioenergy.  Interestingly, the fungus the ants cultivate is not known to degrade cellulose.  To determine what microbes contribute to the breakdown of cellulose in the garden, we employed a 16S and community metagenomic sequencing approach.  Analysis of this data suggests that the microbial community is dominated by bacteria that belong to the Enterobacteriaceae.  Using this data, we have identified a number of putative cellulase genes of bacterial and fungal origin.   Furthermore, we have cultured isolates from these gardens corresponding to our metagenomic data, sequenced their genomes, and are working toward understanding their role as cellulose-degraders.  In this way, a clearer picture of how the fungus garden microbial community interacts with the ant-fungus association can be ascertain, providing further insight into this highly complex symbiosis.