The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct - Softcover

Hölldobler, Bert; Wilson, Edward O.

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0393338681 ISBN 13: 9780393338683

Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company, 2010

Synopsis

From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants comes this dynamic and visually spectacular portrait of Earth's ultimate superorganism.

The Leafcutter Ants is the most detailed and authoritative description of any ant species ever produced. With a text suitable for both a lay and a scientific audience, the book provides an unforgettable tour of Earth's most evolved animal societies. Each colony of leafcutters contains as many as five million workers, all the daughters of a single queen that can live over a decade. A gigantic nest can stretch thirty feet across, rise five feet or more above the ground, and consist of hundreds of chambers that reach twenty-five feet below the ground surface. Indeed, the leafcutters have parlayed their instinctive civilization into a virtual domination of forest, grassland, and cropland―from Louisiana to Patagonia. Inspired by a section of the authors' acclaimed The Superorganism, this brilliantly illustrated work provides the ultimate explanation of what a social order with a half-billion years of animal evolution has achieved. Four-color throughout, 56 photographs

About this title

About the Authors

Bert Hölldobler is Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. He lives in Arizona and Germany.

Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson was a professor emeritus at Harvard University and lived with his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts.

Reviews

Leafcutter ants are familiar to all who watch nature shows about the tropics, or those who live in rural Texas and Louisiana. These are the ants busily running in columns on trails they keep free of debris and vegetation, carrying freshly cut sections of leaves and flower petals over their heads like parasols. If one followed the ants to their nest, one would discover an immense network of tunnels, the majority of which are an underground garden in which the ants grow their food—fungus planted onto a substrate of chewed plant material previously brought by the ants. In this new look at the leafcutter ants, Pulitzer Prize winners Hölldobler (with Wilson for The Ants, 1990) and Wilson (On Human Nature, 1978) introduce the general reader to earth’s most evolved animal society. With the colony’s queen as its reproductive organ; the various ages and types of workers as the brain, heart, and other organs; and the communication among the ants similar to the communication of nerves and ganglia, a leafcutter ant colony can be truly considered as a superorganism. --Nancy Bent

Edition details

• Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0393338681
• ISBN 13: 9780393338683
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 192