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 this utility, Dr. Kyohsuke Ohkawara and colleagues recently conducted an interesting study in this group, which was published last month. They investigated the impact of variations in prey size on the shape of mandibles in Japanese trap-jaw ants.
