The Ants.

Bert Hölldobler

Harvard University Press, 1990 - Science - 732 pages

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This landmark work, the distillation of a lifetime of research by the world's leading myrmecologists, is a thoroughgoing survey of one of the largest and most diverse groups of animals on the planet. Hölldobler and Wilson review in exhaustive detail virtually all topics in the anatomy, physiology, social organization, ecology, and natural history of the ants. In large format, with almost a thousand line drawings, photographs, and paintings, it is one of the most visually rich and all-encompassing views of any group of organisms on earth. It will be welcomed both as an introduction to the subject and as an encyclopedia reference for researchers in entomology, ecology, and sociobiology.

What people are saying

Review: The Ants

User Review  - Douglas Tatelman - Goodreads

I'm looking at an incredible sleek, well designed creature, with smooth surfaces and tiny features that put a Ferrari to shame. It's got little grooves to tuck in antennas when fighting. Tiny chemical ...

Review: The Ants

User Review  - Marie Hviding - Goodreads

This is an exhaustive look at ants. It is impressive in its comprehensiveness and its obvious enthusiasm for its subject. However, for the everyday reader hoping to learn about ants, it is a bit too ...

Contents

• The Importance of Ants: 1
• The Colony Life Cycle: 143
• Altruism and the Origin of the Worker Caste: 179
• Colony Odor and Kin Recognition: 197
• Queen Numbers and Domination: 209
• Communication: 227
• Caste and Division of Labor: 298
• SeriesParallel Operations: 356
• Variation among Colonies: 362
• Ants Do Not Play: 370
• Humidity Regulation: 374
• Daily Cycles of Activity: 382
• Energy Maximizers versus Time Minimizers: 388
• Territorial Strategies: 400
• Territory Predation and True Slavery: 414
• Changing and Removing Dominants: 421
• Trophallactic Appeasement: 429
• The Future of Community Studies: 435
• Symbioses with Other Arthropods: 471
• Symbioses between Ants and Plants: 530
• The Specialized Predators: 557
• The Army Ants: 573
• The Harvesting Ants: 609
• Weaver Ants: 619
• Collecting Culturing Observing: 630
• Bibliography: 645
• Acknowledgments: 712

About the author

Bert Hölldobler is now Foundation Professor of Biology at Arizona State University; formerly Chair of Behavioral Physiology and Sociology at the Theodor Boveri Institute, University of Würzburg. He is also the recipient of the U.S. Senior Scientist Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German government. Until 1990, he was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University.

He was born in Birmingham, Alabama, in 1929. He is currently Pellegrino University Research Professor & Honorary Curator in Entomology of the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard. He is on the Board of Directors of the Nature Conservancy, Conservation International & the American Museum of Natural History. He lives in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Bibliographic information

• Title: The Ants.
• Author: Bert Hölldobler
• Contributor: Edward Osborne Wilson
• Edition: illustrated
• Publisher: Harvard University Press, 1990
• ISBN: 0674040759, 9780674040755
• Length: 732 pages
• Subjects: Nature / Animals / Insects & Spiders; Science / Life Sciences / Biology; Science / Life Sciences / Zoology / Entomology