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Chapter I The Challenge of the Mound It was a curious, somehow weird-looking thing, that mound. About a yard in height and three and a half in diameter, it squatted in the grassy grove next the clump of trees like an enormous, inverted soup plate. Here and there tufts of grass waved on it, of a richer, deeper color, testifying to the unwholesome fertility of the crumbling outer stuff that had flaked from the solid mound walls. Like an excrescence on the flank of Mother Earth herself, the mound loomed; like an unhealthy, cancerous growth. And inside the enigmatic thing was another world. A dark world, mysterious, horrible, peopled by blind and terrible demons--a world like a Dante's dream of a second Inferno. Such, at least, were the thoughts of Dennis Braymer as he worked with delicate care at the task of sawing into the hard cement of a portion of the wall near the rounded top. His eyes, dark brown and rimmed with thick black lashes, flashed earnestly behind his glasses as they concentrated on his difficult job. His face, lean and tanned, was a mask of seriousness. To him, obviously, this was a task of vital importance; a task worthy of all a man's ability of brain and logic. Obviously also, his companion thought of the work as just something with which to fill an idle afternoon. He puffed at a pipe, and regarded the entomologist with a smile.
Armed with splinters of steel, two ant-sized men dare the formidable mysteries of a termitary.
Social Insects, Volume II is essentially a continuation and review of topics covered in Volume I. The main focus of this volume is on the systematic of eusocial hymenoptera and the closely associated realms of presocial insects and social non-insectan arthropods. Consisting of five major chapters, this volume starts with the chapter on the enemies and defense mechanisms of termites. Several mechanisms are discussed in this chapter, such as defense by the nest, workers, and soldiers. Chapter 3 focuses on presocial insects and a comparison of parental care without nests and based on nests. Chapter 4 discusses the sociality of Arachnida and emphasizes the patterns and evolution of sociality in Arachnida, particularly spiders. Two chapters discuss the social hymenoptera, including its defensive mechanisms and its systematics. This volume will be of great help to students and professionals in the field of entomology, biology, and zoology.
Includes section "current literature."
A rat will go out of its way to help a stranger in need. Lions have adopted the calves of their prey. Ants farm fungus in cooperatives. Why do we continue to believe that life in the animal kingdom is ruled by competition? In The Social Lives of Animals, biologist Ashley Ward takes us on a wild tour across the globe as he searches for a more accurate picture of how animals build societies. Ward drops in on a termite mating ritual (while his guides snack on the subjects), visits freelance baboon goatherds, and swims with a mixed family of whales and dolphins. Along the way, Ward shows that the social impulses we’ve long thought separated humans from other animals might actually be our strongest connection to them. Insightful, engaging, and often hilarious, The Social Lives of Animals demonstrates that you can learn more about animals by studying how they work together than by how they compete.
Our objective in compiling a series of chapters on the chemical ecology of insects has been to delineate the major concepts of this discipline. The fine line between presenting a few topics in great detail or many topics in veneer has been carefully drawn, such that the book contains sufficient diversity to cover the field and a few topics in some depth. After the reader has penetrated the crust of what has been learned about chemical ecology of insects, the deficiencies in our understanding of this field should become evident. These deficiencies, to which no chapter topic is immune, indicate the youthful state of chemical ecology and the need for further investigations, especially those with potential for integrating elements that are presently isolated from each other. At the outset of this volume it becomes evident that, although we are beginning to decipher how receptor cells work, virtually nothing is known of how sensory information is coded to become relevant to the insect and to control the behavior of the insect. This problem is exacerbated by the state of our knowledge of how chemicals are distributed in nature, especially in complex habitats. And finally, we have been unable to understand the significance of orientation pathways of insects, in part because of the two previous problems: orientation seems to depend on patterns of distri bution of chemicals, the coding of these patterns by the central nervous system, and the generation of motor output based on the resulting motor commands.
This volume constitutes the proceedings of the 18th Mexican Conference on Artificial Intelligence, MICAI 2019, held in Xalapa, Mexico, in October/November 2019. The 59 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 148 submissions. They cover topics such as: machine learning; optimization and planning; fuzzy systems, reasoning and intelligent applications; and vision and robotics.
“In Mr. Wilson ants have found not only their Darwin but also their Homer.” —Economist In Tales from the Ant World, two-time Pulitzer Prize winner Edward O. Wilson takes us on a thrilling myrmecological tour across continents and through time, inviting us into his decades-long scientific obsession with ants. Animating his observations with personal stories, Wilson hones in on twenty-five ant species to explain how these creatures talk, smell, taste, and crucially, how they fight to determine dominance. Richly illustrated throughout with depictions of ant species and photos from Wilson’s own expeditions, Tales from the Ant World is a fascinating personal account from one of our greatest scientists—and a necessary volume for any lover of the natural world.