Adventures Among Ants - Mark W. Moffett [156]
2. This isn’t to imply that ants evolve from one of these kinds of societies to the next. Nor do human societies necessarily take this path; for example, even hunter-gatherer bands exist today.
A Brief Primer on Ants
1. In ants, part of the abdomen is united with the thorax, so among ant specialists these body parts are more correctly referred to as the gaster and the trunk (or mesosoma). The waist is formally known as the petiole; it may also have a second segment, called the postpetiole.
2. I have also seen bulldog ants turn to watch me go by before sprinting after me and leaping onto my legs—an undesirable situation given their swordlike stingers. See MW Moffett 2007, Bulldog ants: Lone huntress, National Geographic 211: 140–149.
3. As Deby Cassill puts it, “Our hands have segmented digits (fingers) and a one-segmented palm. Ants have single segmented digits (spines) and multiple segmented palms (tarsi)” (personal communication). See also D Cassill, A Greco, R Silwal, X Wang 2007, Opposable spines facilitate fine and gross object manipulation in fire ants, Naturwissenschaften 94: 326–332.
4. For other examples of “eusocial” animals and a discussion of this term and others, see James T. Costa, The Other Social Insects (Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 2006); and Nigel C. Bennett and Cris G. Faulkes, African Mole-Rats: Ecology and Eusociality (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000). For views on the original conditions of ants and termites, see BL Thorne, JFA Traniello 2003, Comparative social biology of basal taxa of ants and termites, Annu. Rev. Entomol. 48: 283–306.
5. Benoit Jahyny, personal communication; B Jahyny, S Lacau, JHC Delabie, D Fresneau, Le genre Thaumatomyrmex, cryptique et prédateur spécialiste de Diplopoda Penicillata, in Sistemática, biogeografía y conservación de las hormigas cazadoras de Colombia, ed. E Jiménez, F Fernández, T Milena Arias, FH Lozano- Zambrano (Bogotá: Instituto de Investigación de Recursos Biológicos Alexander von Humboldt, 2007), pp. 329–346.
6. One ant species has dispensed with males entirely; see AG Himler, EJ Caldera, BC Baer, HF Marín, UG Mueller, No sex in fungus-farming ants or their crops, Proc. R. Soc. Lond. Ser. B 276: 2611–2616. Is there a take-home message for feminists from the ant sisterhoods? Probably not. The careers of ants, male or female, queen or worker, are largely immutable. Channeled into an occupation and career path from the onset of adulthood, an ant has few options in life—which brings to mind the sign posted at the entrance of the ant colony in T. H. White’s The Once and Future King: “Everything not forbidden is compulsory.”
7. EO Wilson 2005, Kin selection as the key to altruism: Its rise and fall, Soc. Res. 72: 159–166; EO Wilson, B Hölldobler 2005, Eusociality: Origin and consequences, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102: 13367–13371. For other views, see P Nonacs, KM Kapheim 2007, Social heterosis and the maintenance of genetic diversity, J. Evol. Biol 20: 2253–2265; and KR Foster, T Wenseleers, FLW Ratnieks 2006, Kin selection is the key to altruism, Trends Ecol. Evol. 21: 57–60.
8. In rare cases genetic differences are critical in caste determination; see KE Anderson, TA Linksvayer, CR Smith 2008, The causes and consequences of genetic caste determination in ants, Myrmecol. News 11: 119–132.
9. Different age classes are referred to as “temporal castes,” though recent work suggests young workers focus on nursing chores not because they are specialists but rather because they are developmentally immature and tend to stay on the brood piles where they are born, while older workers are broadly competent at tasks both inside and outside the nest; see ML Muscedere, TA Willey, JFA Traniello 2009, Age and task efficiency in the ant Pheidole dentata: Young minor workers are not specialist nurses, Anim. Behav. 77: 911–918; and MA Seid, JFA Traniello 2006, Agerelated repertoire expansion and division of labor in Pheidole dentata: A new perspective