The ant species Leptothorax acervorum is found throughout the Northern hemisphere. While many populations have multiple queens, a few have only one queen that reproduces. And in those societies, ...

In a small test tube, the ant queen is at rest. Around her, worker ants are swarming. The colony is just days old and there’s only a handful, which means they have their work cut out for them. They ...

For some would-be ant queens, the easiest way to take over a colony is to dupe its worker ants into committing regicide. Why some ant colonies get tricked into killing their own queens Biologist E.O.

The unusual life cycles of ants are deeply rooted in their social nature. Ants and other social insects like termites, some bees, and certain wasps live in colonies, in which most individuals never ...

Biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote that "ants are the most warlike of all animals," noting that clashes between ant colonies dwarfed the human battles at Waterloo and Gettysburg. But sometimes ant ...