There is an African ant species of tiny workers that lives in big trees. In these big trees, […]
Category Archive: Reports
One of the more stunning biological discoveries to date is that organisms like ants are not merely individual organisms, but also hosts to trillions of bacteria. Some biologists have increasingly focused on this “microbiome”, and naturally work in ants is no exception. A few months ago, a group of ant researchers discovered yet another cool thing about ants and their microbiome!
If you’re anything like us, you’ve been spending a lot of time lately wondering about ant species coexistence. How can there possibly be 13,384 species of ants, when so many species have overlapping niches in space, food resources, and other traits? Shouldn’t the most competitive ant species ultimately drive all the others to extinction?
Dedicated readers of our myrmeco-media outlet will remember our first editorial (that went mildly viral) on efforts by the vertebrate media to bury the lede (ants) with a dinosaur tail. We’re happy to report, via Fossil Correspondant Dr. Regan Dunn, that ants are actively asserting their dominance over the paleo realm.
Dedicated readers of The Daily Ant may remember that earlier this year, we featured myrmecologist Dr. Adrian Smith and his work on ant babies. Such readers may also remember our coverage of the Field Museum AntLab’s Dr. Shauna Price in a Theatre Thursdays installment. Well, recently, the same Dr. Price shared with us a marvelous BBC feature on ant babies from last spring. Although we do not endorse some of the vertebrate framing (“No one would call a baby ant cute.” Srsly?), we definitely recommend that everyone read the article and come to appreciate just how cool ant babies really are!
It’s hard to believe it, but it’s true. What started out one year ago from yesterday as a podunk formicid-friendly online media project with an inaugural post on loving your house ants has grown into a podunk formicid-friendly online media project with 196 published articles. Whether you’re joining us now for the first time, or have traversed the long foraging trail of myrmecological justice since the very beginning, it’s time to consider what we’ve accomplished together.
In a recent episode of the (wonderfully named) Science for the People podcast, University of Illinois – Chicago PhD student Anika Hazra interviewed myrmecologists Stephen Pratt and Simon Garnier. You may remember Hazra, also a myrmecologist, from her great antforgraphic on ant colony optimization! Now check out her engaging and informative interview of Pratt and Garnier, on ant intelligence, here.
The Daily Ant is thrilled to report that we have launched a historic GoFundMe campaign: “AntSongs: A Daily Ant Experience“.
Bring such remarkable tunes as Tom Waits’ “Army Ants”, Frank Sinatra’s “High Hopes”, and Calle 13’s “El Hormiguero” to life! The Daily Ant will partner with Jordan Blanchard, a singer-songwriter from Michigan, to produce interpretive covers of these underappreciated classics.
If you would like to support this formicid-forward campaign, donate today!
Freelance CG artist Eric Keller reached out to The Daily Ant, and brought to our attention an absolutely fantastic […]
We start this post with an unusual sentence: A recent headline in New York Daily News caught our attention. […]
Here at The Daily Ant, we know that so much of the mainstream media enjoys focusing on (allegedly) […]
Ant Colony Optimization is an excellent example of ant biology directly improving human affairs (in this case, planning […]
