Adventures Among Ants - Mark W. Moffett [157]
10. Edward O. Wilson, Success and Dominance in Ecosystems: The Case of the Social Insects (Oldendorf/Luhe, Germany: Ecology Institute, 1990).
11. CS Moreau, CD Bell, R Vila, SB Archibald, NE Pierce 2006, Phylogeny of the ants: Diversification in the age of angiosperms, Science 312: 101–104; and EO Wilson, B Hölldobler 2005, The rise of the ants: A phylogenetic and ecological explanation, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 102: 7411–7414.
1. Strength in Numbers
1. C. T. Bingham, Hymenoptera, vol. 2, Ants and Cuckoo-Wasps, in The Fauna of British India, Including Ceylon and Burma, ed. W. T. Blanford (London: Taylor & Francis, 1903), p. 161.
2. It’s curious that the largest marauder ants don’t take a role in transporting food; see FD Duncan 1995, A reason for division of labor in ant foraging, Naturwissenschaften 82: 293–296. Similar arguments have been made for why small leafcutter ants ride on foliage carried by their large sisters, though in that case the hitchhikers have other functions (see p. 183).
3. In this book, the term army ant is used to indicate membership in the ant subfamilies Dorylinae, Ecitoninae, and Aenictinae, issues of whether they share a common ancestor aside. For general reviews, see DJC Kronauer 2008, Recent advances in army ant biology, Myrmecol. News 12: 51–65; and WH Gotwald Jr., Army Ants: The Biology of Social Predation (Ithaca, N.Y.: Cornell University Press, 1995). For views on their evolution, see SG Brady 2003, Evolution of the army ant syndrome: The origin and long-term evolutionary stasis of a complex of behavioral and reproductive adaptations, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 100: 6575–6579; and SG Brady, TR Schultz, BL Fisher, PS Ward 2006, Evaluating alternative hypotheses for the early evolution and diversification of ants, Proc. Natl. Acad. Sci. 103: 18172–18177.
4. Herbert Spencer, The Principles of Sociology (New York: Appleton, 1876), 1: 447–600; and WM Wheeler 1911, The ant-colony as an organism, J. Morphol. 22: 307–325. The mid-nineteenth-century German beekeeper Johannes Mehring was perhaps the first to compare colonies (of honeybees) with whole animal bodies; see J Mehring, Das neue Einwesensystem als Grundlage zur Bienenzucht, oder Wie der rationelle Imker den höchsten Ertrag von seinen Bienen erzielt. Auf Selbsterfahrungen gegründet (Frankenthal: Albeck, 1869).
5. See, e.g., Rudolf Virchow, Cellular Pathology, 2nd English ed. (New York: Robert De Witt, 1860), pp. 12–13: “The composition of the major organism, the so-called individual, must be likened to a kind of social arrangement or society, in which a number of separate existences are dependent upon one another, in such a way, however, that each element possesses its own peculiar activity and carries out its own task by its own powers.”
6. Lewis Thomas, The Lives of a Cell (New York: Viking Press, 1974), p. 12.
7. The identity of the signal remains unknown; see EJH Robinson, DE Jackson, M Holcombe, FLW Ratnieks 2005, Insect communication: “No entry” signal in ant foraging, Nature 438: 442.
8. CJ Kleineidam, W Rössler, B Hölldobler, F Roces 2007, Perceptual differences in trail-following leafcutting ants relative to body size, J. Insect Physiol. 53: 1233–1241.
9. The telecommunications industry may one day take advantage of this system of mass communication with a program to, in effect, release digital ants into the telecom network that will leave digital pheromones to reinforce a path where travel is easy. The electronic pheromones will decay over time, so the current best route will always be marked most strongly, limiting traffic tie-ups. See E Bonabeau, C Meyer 2001, Swarm intelligence: A whole new way to think about business, Harvard Business Review 79: 106–114.
10. Unfortunately, most scientists use the word forager to designate any worker outside the nest. It takes care to ascertain whether a worker is searching for food or carrying out such activities as looking for enemies, constructing a trail, or cleaning. Sometimes it’s a matter