Product Description

From the Arctic to South Africa - one finds them everywhere: Ants. Making up nearly 15% of the entire terrestrial animal biomass, ants are impressive not only in quantitative terms, they also fascinate by their highly organized and complex social system. Their caste system, the division of labor, the origin of altruistic behavior and the complex forms of chemical communication makes them the most interesting group of social organisms and the main subject for sociobiologists. Not least is their ecological importance: Ants are the premier soil turners, channelers of energy and dominatrices of the insect fauna.

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #154290 in Books
• Published on: 1990-03-28
• Original language: English
• Number of items: 1
• Binding: Hardcover
• 746 pages

Amazon.com Review
This is the definitive scientific study of one of the most diverse animal groups on earth; pretty well everything that is known about ants is in this massive work. But books do not win Pulitzer Prizes, as this one did in 1991, for exhaustiveness; besides being the last word in science, this work is beautifully written, and accessible to the lay reader. Wilson, of Harvard, and Holldobler of the University of Wurzburg, may inspire a whole new generation of budding entomologists. Every branch of biology is covered, from evolution to taxonomy to physiology to ecology. Lavishly illustrated, it is full of amazing facts, many concerning the incredible social behavior of these creatures.

Review
"The Ants should be in every University and High School library." (TREE) "The book is truly comprehensive; very little ant biology that I am aware of has been omitted....Many of the illustrations are art in their own right. Rarely has a group of organisms been represented so well. (The Quarterly Review of Biology)

Review
A monumental achievement, the last word in myrmecology, the study of ants...It is likely the average adult...will be intrigued by passages about these ubiquitous and complicated creatures.
--Paul Galloway (Chicago Tribune )

While it is impossible to write a definitive tome and make it 100 percent transparent to the nonscientist, this volume achieves the utmost clarity...Science is rarely good literature. The Ants is an exalting exception.
--Thomas E. Lovejoy (New York Times Book Review )

This magnificent and long-awaited volume is the definitive work on [ants]...Every imaginable area of interest to a biologist, a sociologist, even a curious citizen, is covered...At once remarkably exhaustive and parsimonious, the book does not stint on exhaustive detail wherever such detail is required.
--William Brown (Scientific American )

The beauty of this heavily illustrated tome is that it conveys this message to both the lay reader and the professional entomologist with equal aplomb. For the interested but ignorant, Hölldobler and Wilson provide a gentle introduction into the complex and bizarre reality of life as an ant...This myrmecological bible--with its 50-page key to ant classification, 60 pages of detailed anatomical drawings and hundreds of other sketches and photos--is a scientific and artistic accomplishment of historic significance. Yet it succeeds in convincing even the most casual reader of --as the first chapter is titled--the Importance of Ants.
--Rick Weiss (Washington Post )

The Ants is a stunningly attractive volume that belongs as much on the coffee table as it does on the lab bench... The 20 chapters are organized thematically, and they are written in a clear, accessible and engaging style... Only Hölldobler and Wilson could have written such a comprehensive and integrated treatment of ant biology. It represents a herculean labour of love, and it sets a new standard for synthetic works on major taxa...The Ants will undoubtedly remain in active service for decades, guiding both tourists and seasoned travellers through a strange and wonderful world.
--Donald H. Feener, Jr., et al. (Nature )

The Ants is not only another milestone in a remarkable career but also a high point in crossover publishing. For the specialist. Holldobler and Wilson bring elegance and order to a complex subject. For the curious layman, there is a glimpse into the workings of evolution.
--R.Z. Sheppard (Time )

Hölldobler and Wilson's mighty tome will surely take its place among the greatest of all entomology books...it will inspire many new gereations of students with its blend of scholarship, enthusiasm, and unabashed delight. (Science )

Customer Reviews

"The Ants" is THE ant book
by Mark Fitzsimmons

This is a fascinating, indispensible book for anyone interested in ants. It was everything I hoped it would be and more. I have owned this book for three years and still haven't stopped reading it, probably never will. It is jam-packed with interesting and little known aspects of eusocialism in the ants, easily as diverse as its subject.

This is a semi-technical book, and entomological scientific jargon is used ubiquitously, so if you aren't interested in using the glossary frequently just to understand what you're reading, it may not be for you, but for the avid ant-watcher or scientist interested in social evolution, this is it. With the incredible drawings (including representative pictures from every known ant genera) and informative graphs and charts that shed light on even the most complex and difficult to understand socio-biological patterns, it is beautiful to behold and fun to browse and just pluck little tidbits at random. Even the expanded table of contents is thought-provoking and fun to read.

"The Ants" does more than simply summarize current knowledge about ants. It goes into details of the many different ways in which ants have evolved social structures and critically evaluates theories of ant colony dynamics and eusocial evolution.

Excellent
This is a book that makes you want to drop everything and dedicate all your time to the study of ants. There are not too many books out there that are so well-written that they induce such emotions. It is a sizable book, and for those outside the field of myrmecology, it probably would not be read cover-to-cover. But every page of this book is fascinating, and considering the time and effort the authors put into it, it is no surprise that it has been the target of numerous awards. The authors dedicate the book to the "next generation of myrmecologists", and no doubt they have convinced many individuals to take up the field. The authors convey to the reader that the study of ants is a thriving field, and there are lots of research questions unanswered in their study.
Space prohibits a detailed review, so I will list instead the parts of the book that I consider most interesting: 1. The variation in the mode of colony founding among the different species of ants. 2. The mating habits of ants, in particular the female-calling and aggregation syndromes. 3. The description of the experiment showing the role of male pheromones in carpenter ants. 4. The statistical analysis of the time of swarming. 5. The comparison between different hypotheses for polyandry. 6. The universal occurence across species of 'nanitics' or 'minims' in the first brood and their ergonomic advantages. 7. The parental manipulation and offspring consent hypotheses for the origin of worker castes. 8. Eusociality and chromosome number as a strategy for reducing genetic variance. 9. The role of learning in colony-level recognition. 10. The presence of conflict between queens and workers in the management of new queens and males. 11. The existence of modulatory communication in ants (this was definitely the most interesting discussion in the book ). 12. The steps in the evolution of physical castes. 13. The result that colony-level selection is the opposite of what one would expect from individual-level selection, the later tending to improving phenotypes. 14. The use of allometric space to model evolutionary optimization. 15. The capability of associative learning in ants. 16. Ant-termite warfare. 17. The entire chapter on army ants.

Excelent book!
This is an excellent book. If you love ants, or you are starting to study them, or simply like to read excellent science books, this one's for you. It is very well written, and, although it is technical in many aspects, it is a delight to read it. It is full of pictures, diagrams and graphs of almost any aspect you can imagine. Almost any subject that the book addresses is explained at length in a clear and understandable way. However, there are some parts of it where you need some background in biology and mathematics to understand the book.

Both Holldobler and Wilson, who have a strong background in ant studies, have outdone themselves. In this book you can learn about virtually any aspects concerning ants, from their anatomy to their classification and more. And besides this, the book also teaches a lot of things not only related to ants but more general, like evolution and kin selection (applied not only to ants but also to eusocial insects). Learning so much about the ants makes you change your viewpoint about this little animal and makes you think about how incredible nature (or God) is to create such beautiful, incredible animals.