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Loved it, very informational with some wonderful anecdotes.
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Ants at Work: How an Insect Society is Organized
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Individual ants manage their incredibly complex colonies with no one in charge―how do they do it? Ants have long been regarded as the most interesting of the social insects. With their queens and celibate workers, these intriguing creatures have captured the imaginations of scientists and children alike for generations. Yet until now, no one had studied intensely the life cycle of the ant colony as a whole. An ant colony has a life cycle of about fifteen years―it is born, matures, and dies. But the individual ants that inhabit the colony live only one year. So how does this system of tunnels and caves in the dirt become so much more than the sum of its parts?
Leading ant researcher Deborah Gordon takes the reader to the Arizona desert to explore this question. The answer involves the emerging insights of the new science of complexity, and contributes to understanding the evolution of life itself.
Leading ant researcher Deborah Gordon takes the reader to the Arizona desert to explore this question. The answer involves the emerging insights of the new science of complexity, and contributes to understanding the evolution of life itself.
192 pages, Paperback
First published October 6,1999
This edition
- Format
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192 pages, Paperback
- Published
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October 17, 2000 by W. W. Norton \u0026 Company
- ISBN
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9780393321326
- ASIN
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0393321320
- Language
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English
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Rating(3.8 / 5.0, 32 votes)
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32 reviews All reviews
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Dr Gordon has a lot of questions about Ants. She and her graduate students do some painstaking work to get the answers .
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It's been a long time since I read this book but I recall it being a good recap of Gordon's long history of research as well as a summary of what is still to be learned. Less for the casually interested in nature and more for those who think digging in dirt for hours under the hot desert sun to count ants is an acceptable use of time.
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This book is an easy to read account of a series of several experiments observing harvester ant colonies in a small patch of land in the American Southwest. It's a great read even if your interests are not particularly ant-focused, as the author carefully describes her experimental methods and her well thought out methodology is itself a pleasant exercise in logical thinking. With any interest at all in ants this book is even more worth reading.
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This is a working scientist's detailed view of the ants she studies, told interestingly, with a doggedly curious, hardworking humility that is very appealing: she's studying ants, after all. Year after year, mounting to decades, she goes out to the desert to actually observe, analyze and learn about her tiny hive creatures.
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Really interesting book with a ton of information about ants. The scientist who wrote this book has been working in the fields with ants for 17 YEARS! The book was kind of weirdly structured, as it first describes properties of the ant colonies, goes on to describe interactions of colonies, and then looks at individual colony behaviors. Personally, I would have preferred a complete bottom-up approach, but whatever. The book contains just about anything you want to know about red harvester ants, including some interesting information on how to study them, and what it takes to be an ant scientist.The writing was really plain, and often hard at times to read without losing focus. Still, she really details a lot about the experimental process in science, something many scientists don't do in their books. In fact, the amount of experimental detail could allow you to start your own ant investigations. Ants are fascinating because by following simple local rules, they can create complex global behaviors, information which could be useful to understand complex systems. One thing she notes about ants is that ants really focus on pattern of interaction, as opposed to specific interactions to determine their behavior. Thy also have behaviors that change in response to size. This book has inspired me to try and do some ant experiments of my on at some point in the near future.
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I have a copy of this book and often open it, just to entertain myself. It's a fascinating account of just how 'ants work'.
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While the writing is not superb, the ideas presented are. Overall, this is a great book. It is a fantastic exploration of how simple animals, with simple brains, can create and maintain complex societies, and accomplish complex goals.
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