Average Reviews:
(More customer reviews)This book is an exploration into all aspects of ant life, written for general readers.Holldobler and Wilson, who wrote the massive scientific reference volume, The Ants, felt that there was also a demand for a less formal book about ants that ordinary readers might enjoy reading from cover-to-cover.In this book, they describe not only the lives of ants and ant colonies, but also how their own interests in ants developed.The book covers such topics as the dominance of ants, the life and death of the colony, the colony as a superorganism, ant communication, relations between ants within and between colonies, ancient ants, ant parasites, army ants, and ants and the environment.They also include a brief section on how to study ants.The book is illustrated both black-and white photos and sets of color photographic plates.There is an index, but surprisingly, there is no bibliography or recommendations for further reading; presumably, their main recommendation would be to consult their reference volume, The Ants.
The first chapter in the book, The Dominance of Ants, stood out the most for me.In this chapter, the authors note that ants are overwhelmingly the dominant species on earth.By weight, the world ant population equals the world human population, and represents half or more of the world's insect biomass.These ten thousand trillion creatures are spread throughout the world's habitats, from the Amazon to Finland, from deserts to rain forests.With that in mind, the study of ants is clearly well-worth taking up.Why are ants so populous and successful?As the authors argue, one reason is their social nature.They put the survival of the colony above their own individual survival.Nevertheless, through quirks in their reproductive behavior, this cooperative behavior still maximizes the potential for their own genetic material to be passed on to future generations.Just because they are social, however, doesn't mean that all is peaceful within the colony between individual ants, as Holldobler and Wilson point out.These topics and many others are described in language that is very accessible to general readers.I found myself not only better informed about ants after reading this book, but also with a much greater sense of respect for such remarkable creatures.
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