Many ant species excavate nests that are made up of chambers and interconnecting tunnels. There is a general trend of an increase in nest complexity with increasing population size. This complexity reflects a higher ramification and anastomosis of tunnels that can be estimated by the meshedness coefficient of the tunnelling networks. It has long been observed that meshedness increases with colo...

We propose a Hodge field theory construction that captures algebraic properties of the reduction of Zwiebach invari-ants to Gromov-Witten invariants. It generalizes the Barannikov-Kontsevich construction to the case of higher genera correlators with gravitational descendants. We prove the main theorem stating that algebraically defined Hodge field theory correlators satisfy all tautological rel...

Final-instar larvae of weaver ants (Oecophylla longinoda) use their silk for nest construction rather than for cocoon spinning; this commitment represents a shift from entirely selfish to entirely cooperative behavior that occurred after the emergence of the phylogenetically advanced subfamily Formicinae. Male larvae were found to have smaller silk glands and to contribute substantially less si...

The role of the ant colony largely consists of non-reproductive tasks, such as foraging, tending brood, and defense. However, workers are vitally linked to reproduction through their provisioning of sexual offspring, which are produced annually to mate and initiate new colonies. Gynes (future queens) have size-associated variation in colony founding strategy (claustrality), with each strategy r...

An ant colony operates without central control. Each ant uses only local information, mostly odor, and no ant can make global assessments about what needs to be done. No ant gives instructions to another. Through the local decisions of individuals, colonies adjust their behavior to current conditions. An ant decides where to go and what to do based on its recent experience of brief interactions...

Social insects exhibit coordinated behaviour without central control. Local interactions among individuals determine their behaviour and regulate the activity of the colony. Harvester ants are recruited for outside work, using networks of brief antennal contacts, in the nest chamber closest to the nest exit: the entrance chamber. Here, we combine empirical observations, image analysis and compu...

T oday science is in the age of biology and biology is in the age of genomics. Sequencing the entire genome of an organism, an enterprise that could not have been imagined barely 50 y ago, is being thought of as the first step toward a complete understanding of its biology. If I had been asked to recommend just two families of living organisms from which to pick the first two species for whole-...