The Daily Ant
Myrmecology Dies in Darkness
Author: Benjamin Blanchard
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Theaters across the U.S. have made good money from Rogue One: A Star Wars Story. Audiences have flocked to see this film about a fictional ragtag team setting out to save the Rebellion. Yet few know about a moving story shared by a rebel not from a galaxy far, far away, but from Xinjiang, China. Rebiya…
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Nontraditional college students – for example, those that begin college at a later age compared to many recent high school graduates – may sometimes feel isolated from their general college community. But at Western Wyoming Community College, nontraditional students banded together to form a club. This club, of course, is called the Association for Non-Traditional Students…
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Trap-jaw ants are awesome – few dispute this fact. Yet despite the remarkable nature of the trap-jaw mandibular structure, quantitative assessments of predator-prey interactions and ecology in this group are fairly rare. This is particularly surprising given that trap-jaw ants are an ideal system for understanding how morphological structures vary within species across a wide geographic range. Recognizing…
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How readily our thoughts swarm upon a new object, lifting it a little way, as ants carry a blade of straw so feverishly, and then leave it. — Virginia Woolf, The Mark on the Wall (1917)
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At 2:15pm Eastern Time today, Jezebel posted its annual list of favorite posts of the year. To our surprise, a question asked by our very own editor-in-chief was chosen as one of the few items on the list!
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There is a band called Ants in the Kitchen. Ants in the Kitchen are playing at Wildhorse Casino in Pendleton, Oregon for New Year’s Eve. We at The Daily Ant wish everyone a responsible (i.e. antsy) New Year’s Eve celebration!
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Pheidole is one of the most diverse ant genera in the world, with 1,004 currently described species. This genus is known for having two worker castes – a “minor” and a “major”. The major caste typically sports a head that is comically larger than minor heads. You can see why Pheidole species are called the “big-headed ants”: This ant group…
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During the summer of 2013, leaks by Edward Snowden revealed to the world the extent of domestic and foreign surveillance by the United States National Security Agency (NSA). These revelations included the PRISM program, XKeyscore, and collaborations with phone companies to sweep up phone records. But one document, at the time, received comparably less press: the NSA product catalog…
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Regular readers of The Daily Ant likely already know that ants are very good at most things. From farming to construction to warfare, ants are rivaled perhaps only by humans. So, it is not surprising that along with a diverse array of interesting and intriguing behaviors, ants are also excellent at something we humans find a little…
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As reported in The Daily Ant last week, Brazilian footballer Miraildes Maciel Mota, known as “Formiga”, has retired from football after a remarkable 21-year career. Understandably, we at The Daily Ant mourned this loss. However, we have recently learned, through an anonymous tip, that Formiga was not the only formicid footballer. The sport’s new standard-bearer is Sebastian Giovinco,…
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Believe it or not, the title of this article is not clickbait. This ant is Colobopsis saundersi:
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On this Christmas Day, Americans across the country come together to celebrate the national holiday in their own way. Christians celebrate the birth of Jesus. Agnostics appreciate a day off from work. Myrmecologists dwell on the ants of Christmas Island. This is the location of Christmas Island:
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