The Leafcutter Ants : Civilization by Instinct
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Parution | 26/10/2010 |
Pages | 192 |
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Présentation
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 that can live over a decade. A gigantic nest can stretch thirty feet across, rise five feet or more above the ground, and consist of hundreds of chambers that reach twenty-five feet below the ground surface. Indeed, the leafcutters have parlayed their instinctive civilization into a virtual domination of forest, grassland, and cropland-from Louisiana to Patagonia. Inspired by a section of the authors' acclaimed The Superorganism, this brilliantly illustrated work provides the ultimate explanation of what a social order with a half-billion years of animal evolution has achieved.
La traduction française: http://www.myrmecofourmis.org/bibliotheque/livre/652507
Sommaire
Prologue
Chapter 1: The ultimate superorganisms
Chapter 2: The attine breakthrough
Chapter 3: The ascent of the leafcutters
Chapter 4: Life cycle of the leafcutters ants
Chapter 5: The Atta caste system
Chapter 6: Harvesting vegetation
Chapter 7: Communication in Atta
Chapter 8: The ant-fungus mutualism
Chapter 9: Hygiene in the symbiosis
Chapter 10: Waste management
Chapter 11: Agropredatrs and agroparasites
Chapter 12: Leafcutter nest
Chapter 13: Trails and trunk routes
Acknowledgments
Glossary
References
Index
- 25 lectures
Bibliothèque