Adventures among Ants
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Intrepid international explorer, biologist, and photographer Mark W. Moffett, «the Indiana Jones of entomology,» takes us around the globe on a strange and colorful journey in search of the hidden world of ants. In tales from Nigeria, Indonesia, the Amazon, Australia, California, and elsewhere, Moffett recounts his entomological exploits and provides fascinating details on how ants live and how they dominate their ecosystems through strikingly human behaviors, yet at a different scale and a faster tempo. Moffett’s spectacular close-up photographs shrink us down to size, so that we can observe ants in familiar roles; warriors, builders, big-game hunters, and slave owners. We find them creating marketplaces and assembly lines and dealing with issues we think of as uniquely human—including hygiene, recycling, and warfare. <i>Adventures among Ants</i> introduces some of the world’s most awe-inspiring species and offers a startling new perspective on the limits of our own perception.<br /><br />• Ants are world-class road builders, handling traffic problems on thoroughfares that dwarf our highway systems in their complexity<br /><br />• Ants with the largest societies often deploy complicated military tactics<br /><br />• Some ants have evolved from hunter-gatherers into farmers, domesticating other insects and growing crops for food
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ADVENTURES AMONG ANTS
Edward O. Wilson, and his elemental joy in the naturalist’s life;
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I had never seen anything like this. The minor, media, and major workers didn’t look like they belonged to the same species. The heads of the largest workers were ten times wider than those of the smallest. The biggest majors, which I came to call giants, weighed as much as five hundred minors. The energy and expense required to produce these giants—and to keep them fed and housed—must, I thought, be immense, which meant they must be of extraordinary value to their colonies. I left the collection that day certain I had found something special: few ants display anything close to the extreme polymorphism of Pheidologeton.
As a student I knew that the best-studied polymorphic ants were ones I’d seen on my first trip to Costa Rica—certain Atta, or leafcutter ants, and New World army ants such as Eciton burchellii. These ants have some of the most complex societies known for any animal, giving them an exceptional influence over their environment. Their social complexity is due in part to the division of labor made possible by their varied workers, which, with their differing physical characteristics and behavior, can serve different roles in their societies. Called castes, these classes of labor specialists focus variously on foraging, food processing or storage, child rearing, or defense, such as when large individuals serve as soldiers. Given its minor, media, and major castes, I suspected that Pheidologeton would be a treasure trove of social complexity.
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