Any casual observer of ants has probably discovered that, somehow, ants are able to return to their colony […]
Category Archive: Reports
I didn’t manage to write a post for today, but a recent study suggests that laziness may not […]
It may be Friday the 13th, but this article is talking about some lucky ants. Canopy ants, in particular. Ants that forage in trees exhibit a high level of ecological dominance, and ants are usually the most conspicuous organisms running around on tree trunks and branches, especially in tropical forests. This begs the question: Why? Dr. Terry McGlynn and Erica Parra, in a paper published last year, set out to address this question.
I just completed a 4-minute lightning talk on my recent work with Dr. Corrie Moreau on defensive trait evolution […]
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A recent study by Oksana Skaldina and Jouni Sorvari looked at head coloration in ants as a possible metric for the […]
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.
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 provides an excellent study system for investigating a fundamental question in ant research: How, and why, do major and minor worker castes evolve? Dr. Jo-anne Holley and colleagues addressed just this question in a study published earlier this year.
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 less exciting: biological invasions.
Believe it or not, the title of this article is not clickbait.
This ant is Colobopsis saundersi:
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:
This is a turtle:
Many people around the world believe that turtles are boring.
This is a turtle ant:
Many people around the world believe that turtle ants are fascinating.
Reportedly, one of the turtle ant characteristics that people love most is how they use their heads to block their nest entrances. But these turtle ants may also provide insights into the evolution of worker castes in ants, as shown recently by Dr. Robert Planqué and colleagues in a new study published in the Journal of Evolutionary Biology.
The Daily Ant 