Comments on: Book review – The Guests of Ants: How Myrmecophiles Interact with Their Hosts

By: Book review – Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 08 Jul 2024 15:20:20 +0000

[…] Scaling up further brings Gordon to the level of inter-colony interactions, both conspecific (between colonies of the same species) and heterospecific (between colonies of different species). Interactions are both direct, e.g. encounter rate with neighbours indicating the size of their colony, and indirect, e.g. competition for food being a zero-sum game: what one colony eats is not available to the other. Bar some spectacular exceptions, fighting between conspecifics is usually avoided. In response to neighbourly interactions, harvester ant patrollers will redirect the next day’s foraging trails. When it comes to heterospecific interactions, conflict has been better studied and Gordon highlights the rise of invasive ant species in the last three decades as another opportunity to do so. In general, numerical advantage trumps body size, with small-bodied species capable of simply swarming larger-bodied ones. A further, delightful level of interaction is between ants and the organisms living in their midst (so-called myrmecophiles) that I discussed at length when reviewing The Guests of Ants. […]

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By: Book review – The Ant Collective: Inside the World of an Ant Colony | The Inquisitive Biologist

Thu, 04 Jul 2024 15:01:00 +0000

[…] impressive photographic books on ants, covering amongst others army ants, desert ants, and myrmecophiles. Despite being a slimmer volume written for a general audience, The Ant Collective rubs shoulders […]

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By: Year list – The Inquisitive Biologist’s top 5 reads of 2022 | The Inquisitive Biologist

Sat, 31 Dec 2022 12:36:16 +0000

[…] Ants make it to my top 5 for the third year running. Harvard University Press has built a reputation for publishing stellar books on ants and The Guests of Ants joins that line-up. Veteran entomologist Bert Hölldobler and Christina L. Kwapich have written a beautifully illustrated, wide-ranging, and critical literature review of myrmecophiles: the many creatures that make their home in and around ant nests. Read more… […]

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By: Book review – Army Ants: Nature’s Ultimate Social Hunters | The Inquisitive Biologist

Mon, 19 Dec 2022 16:06:58 +0000

[…] book does not run out of steam towards the end either. A final chapter explores the many (many!) insects and other organisms that have made an unlikely home inside or nearby army ant colonies, how they manage not to get eaten alive, and how they have adapted to a nomadic host. Kronauer […]

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