The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct
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...
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From the Pulitzer Prize-winning authors of The Ants comes this dynamic and visually spectacular portrait of Earth's ultimate superorganism.
List of illustrations ix\ Prologue 1\ Chapter 1 The Ultimate Superorganisms 5\ Chapter 2 The Attine Breakthrough 11\ Chapter 3 The Ascent of the Leafcutters 31\ Chapter 4 Life Cycle of the Leafcutter Ants 33\ Chapter 5 The Atta Caste System 51\ Chapter 6 Harvesting Vegetation 59\ Chapter 7 Communication in Atta 77\ Chapter 8 The Ant-Fungus Mutualism 89\ Chapter 9 Hygiene in the Symbiosis 95\ Chapter 10 Waste Management 107\ Chapter 11 Agropredators and Agroparasites 111\ Chapter 12 Lcafcutcer Nests 115\ Chapter 13 Trails and Trunk Routes 123\ Acknowledgments 129\ Glossary 131\ References 139\ Index 155
\ From Barnes & NobleBy any standard except stature, leafcutter ants are downright awesome. Colonies of these tiny leaf-cutters contain as many as five million workers, all the daughters of a single fertile queen. Their nests are gigantic, some of them stretching thirty feet across, five feet above the ground and twenty-five feet beneath it. These fingernail-sized conquistadors have built empires from Louisiana to Patagonia. In this truly astonishing book, sociobiologists Bert Hölldobler and Edward O. Wilson present the most detailed, authoritative description of any ant species ever produced. The pair's infatuation is always well-documented: their 1991 The Ants won a much-deserved Pulitzer Prize. Flip the pages. The photographs and captions alone are worth the price of this paperback original.\ \ \
