Talk:Ant: Difference between revisions

exarate

you can find the word "exarate' in this article.

I'm sure most people don't know what this word means. I looked it up - it means 'plow up' or 'engrave'. It still makes no sense to me:

'...develop by complete metamorphosis, passing through larval and pupal stages (with the pupae being exarate) before they become adults.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.45.215 (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Because it's an entomological term, referring to the form of the pupa; some editor simply copied this text into the article from an entomological text, without realizing they might need to make a wikilink to explain the term. Most pupae are either exarate or pharate, the former having the appendages (all or some) free, unfused to the body, the latter having no free appendages. Ant and bee pupae are exarate, while butterflies and moths are pharate. Dyanega (talk) 21:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

The pupa link has the information on this and as of now exarate redirects there but maybe there should be wiktionary entries for exarate and obtect. Shyamal (talk) 09:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

Ants as sutures

The use of ants as a kind of suture sounds like a complete myth to me. I read the article cited at Note 69, but that article also does not cite its source for this idea. Google brings up a few other mentions of the same "ants as sutures" idea, but no solid citations. More suspicious: google produces absolutely no photos of this phenomenon. If it actually existed, it would certainly be worth a photo! -Wayne, 7 Apr 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.207.149.47 (talk) 09:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Here are some additional notes I found.

• http://www.time.com/time/magazine/article/0,9171,752462,00.html
• http://www.sutures-bbraun.com/index.cfm?917A74A92A5AE6266700AD9ACBE9432C
• http://www.arthurleej.com/Ants.pdf
• Medical News 79:388, 1901 “The Ant as a Surgeon” R. Loud
• Journal of the American Medical Association 84:1861, 1925 “Stitching Wounds With the Mandibles of Ants and Beetles” E.W. Gudger
• Ackerknecht, Erwin, in a note under the title, "An Ingenious Device for Stitching Wounds. Ciba Symposia, vol.10, July-Aug., 1948, p.924
• Lewis Cutlow of Amazon Head Hunters by E. A. Underwood, in Nature, Feb. 19, 1955, p.318.

Shyamal (talk) 10:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Images

The images are quite good in this article. The only ones I have an issue with are 3 near the end. These are in the Humans and ants section, but seem out of place there.

1. Image:DirkvdM ants on a leaf.jpg , an OK picture but not appropriate here.
2. Image:Rainforestants.jpg , a poor photo and out of context.
3. Image:AntsDismemberingBigBug.jpg , again an OK picture but not appropriate here.

I found a few in other articles, etc.

1. Image:Pharaoh Ant close up.JPG , you can hardly see the ant but thats almost the point. A Caption like "the tiny Pharaoh ant is a major pest in hospitals and office blocks, it can form nests between sheets of paper"
2. Image:Leaf-cutting ant.jpg or Image:AntsStitchingLeave.jpg are IMHO superior to the above , but again not in context of humans & ants. (not that keen on these actually)
3. Image:Miners.jpg or Image:Ant Farm Tunneling.jpeg Ants in a gel ant farm. (to illustrate Studying ants)

I'd like to find a nice 'ants as food' example. I have been looking on Flickr and Commons but not found anything worthy yet. GameKeeper (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A potential find on flickr its a suitable CC license , ant eggs being sold for food in Thailand GameKeeper (talk) 22:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

I'm not so sure a picture of a gel ant farm would be suitable for illustrating the subject of studuying ants. Gel ant farms are not a good environment for ants to live in, merely a novelty. Calamarain (talk) 21:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)

Fair enough. I was seduced by the fact that the photo was quite nice. Now removed. GameKeeper (talk) 19:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

GA Sweeps

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Corvus coronoides _talk 14:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

Nasa Gel

Hello, I just found the following pic, and according to the picture legend, this is a NASA's ant-friendly gel. I both think the article (protected) should include this image, and that an article "NASA's ant-friendly gel" should be create, citation:

These are harvester ants with powerful jaws. In a strange coincidence, a harvester ant colony has a comparable number of neurons as a human brain. There are about 1.6 million ants for every person on earth. The ants you see crawling around are all female. This gel farm was developed by NASA to survive Space Shuttle launches (sand would shift and crush the ants under many G’s). They wanted to study tunnel formation in microgravity. The gel does not collapse during launch, and it contains all the food and water the ants need. It also has some antibiotics and anti-fungal agents.

140.122.97.172 (talk) 11:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought of including a similar image but as you can see in the Talk:Ant#Images section above it was pointed out that these are more novelties than serious ways to study ants. The NASA ant farm was an experiment suggested by high school children, there is something about it [here http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/news/shuttle/sts-107/STS-107-08.html], on the mission which Columbia was destroyed whilst performing. I could not find any references to gel ant farms in any academic papers etc. Since this is a general page on ants I don't think such a specialist item should be here. There is already a page on ant farms or Formicarium which has a gel ant farm picture. GameKeeper (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

Other methods of recruitment

I thought it would be neat to add some information about other methods of recruitment that ants use, because not all ants make trails. I created a short article about tandem running. Would a more established user be willing to link these articles for me? Thanks! Michelanious (talk) 18:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

tandem running was already linked as a WP:REDLINK, so now you have created the article the link goes to your article. GameKeeper (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

Brazilian population eating ants

The source talks about the insect eating habits of the "INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS of Brazil"

But the article talks about "part of the population of Brazil". This is clearly misleading. The indigenous population of Brazil is a very small part of the population.

If the original article was about the native americans of US, the article would refer to them instead of saying "part of the population of US". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.41.10.61 (talk) 04:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The source of this info contains many references to non-indigenous people also enjoying eating ants but also suggesting this was more common in the past than currently, perhaps it would be better to describe ants as 'traditionally eaten' and remove the 'part of the population'. GameKeeper (talk) 21:49, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

Cladogram

I produced the following but it just looks awful if I try to insert it in the text anywhere as it is too big and breaks up the text. I wanted to associate it with the ant#Diversity section. Any ideas of what to do with it are welcome .GameKeeper (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I bodged it into the navbox, I could not get the 1st label of Formicidae to work in the navbox so removed it. Since it duplicates and extends the info in subdvisions , perhaps the list of familys should be enturely replaced with the cladogram. GameKeeper (talk) 22:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

Cladogram of ant subfamilies

 

Formicidae (ants)	Leptanillinae Amblyoponinae Paraponerinae Agroecomyrmecinae Ponerinae Proceratiinae Ecitoninae Aenictinae Dorylini Aenictogitoninae Cerapachyinae* Leptanilloidinae Dolichoderinae Aneuretinae Pseudomyrmecinae Myrmeciinae Prionomyrmecinae Ectatomminae Heteroponerinae Myrmicinae Formicinae

A cladogram showing one model of the extant ant subfamilies based on molecular phylogenetic studies. Ant taxonomy remains ever-changing, and genetic analysis will continue to provide more information about the relatedness of the various species.
*Cerapachyinae is paraphyletic

Baroni Urbani C. 2005. Phylogeny and biogeography of the ant subfamily Prionomyrmecinae (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Ann. Mus. Civ. St. Nat. 'G.Doria' Genova 96: 581-595.

Baroni Urbani C. 2008. Orthotaxonomy and parataxonomy of true and presumed bulldog ants (Hymenoptera, Formicidae). Doriana 8, N. 358: 1-10.

disambig

Regurgitation and solenopsis need a disambig. Randomblue (talk) 21:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

 Done GameKeeper (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Spelling style

British English seems to be the way we are going. If all agree I'll tag this talk page with {{British-English}}. GameKeeper (talk) 09:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the page has been largely dealt with in the past by folks with a BrE leaning. Thanks. Shyamal (talk) 09:08, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

additional pictures.

there are a couple of ant images that I would like to include but I don't want to crowd the text. ( or confuse things this late into the WP:FAC).

• Image:Myrmarachne-plataleoides1.jpg or Image:Myrmarachne-plataleoides.jpg. The mimicry of Myrmarachne plataleoides is stunning and is especially impressive when the sexual dimorphism is considered (the female is also a mimic but in a different way.
• Image:Atta.cephalotes.gamut.jpg Illustrates the castes of leafcutters nicely, in particular the lower image section of workers.

If we were to lose anything to make way for these we may have too many ants collecting honeydew from various species images, however all of there nice images. GameKeeper (talk) 22:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Commented out an image Image:Ant hole activity.jpg titled "Ant hole in a flurry of activity during swarming" inside the "Communication" section - artistic but there is also another swarming photograph. Maybe images in a zigzag layout would be nice. Shyamal (talk) 01:43, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

I've stuck with all on the right side for now. I could not resist adding those two images. GameKeeper (talk) 11:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Image placement

Can we have a few on the left rather than a "strip" down the right-hand side? Graham. GrahamColm^Talk 15:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

 Done GameKeeper (talk) 16:15, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Nevamped Intro

Does this belong in the Lead , it's not about Ants:

Some wingless female wasps of the family Mutillidae, known as velvet ants, can appear like large ants. Termites, sometimes called white ants, are not closely related to ants, although they have similar social structures.'

And the last sentence about computers needs some attention. (Despite losses ???) Graham. GrahamColm^Talk 17:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

• Apparently handled. Shyamal (talk) 06:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Sections

The polymorphism section seems to fit as a subsection within morphology. Development is definitely not, have promoted the section. Wonder if a reordering is needed. Shyamal (talk) 06:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I would support that. If that is done paragraph 2 from development should be moved to the 1st paragraph of Polymorphism as ant castes need to be explained before the current polymorphism paragraph. GameKeeper (talk) 19:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Did this and found a few more stay sentences that seemed out of place. Taking a beak now. GameKeeper (talk) 21:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

Double punct. question marks

I removed a few instances of double fullstops in the references, but there are still problems with references with titles that end in a question mark. Because of the template used these finish with a '?.' . Options.

• Live with it.
• Stop using the cite templates and manually code the reference.
• Remove the question mark so the sentence ends with a full stop. GameKeeper (talk) 21:25, 15 June 2008 (UTC)

Last would be alteration of reference which is a no no. I have raised bug note on Template_talk:Cite_journal Shyamal (talk) 01:34, 16 June 2008 (UTC)

so...what do they eat?

there's a bit about honeydew (not all ants do this), and another about fungus growing (hardly any do this), so what do the rest of them eat? There needs to be a paragraph or two on this. I've been through the article twice. Totnesmartin (talk) 22:50, 21 June 2008 (UTC)

There is also seed feeding, slave providers mentioned within. But yes a line to cover the diversity of food habits is in order. Shyamal (talk) 03:19, 22 June 2008 (UTC)

From the Lead

This sentence is bad: Able to occupy and use a wide area of land to support itself, ant colonies are sometimes described as superorganisms as they appear to operate as unified entities. "Colonies" is plural, "itself" is singular, and the prepositional phrase doesn't sound idiomatic. GrahamColm^Talk 18:55, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

I've changed the case to singular to emphasize the singular nature of the superorganism entity. I don't like the 1st bit Able to occupy and use a wide area of land to support itself, because this is not the reason an ant colony is seen as a superorganism. The reason is that many individuals strive towards a singular goal, with a seemingly unified purpose, the individual being prepared to sacrifice itself for the greater good and the subdivision of labour of the individuals resembles the functions of organs in an animal with their specialism. (the reference is very florid in this description!) Just need to make that snappy enough for the intro! GameKeeper (talk) 23:03, 24 June 2008 (UTC)

No section on sex

How come there's a section on "Defence" and no info on their sexual behaviour? --Sum (talk) 09:14, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

There's already a large chunk of text on that topic, under "development"; "Most ant species have a system in which only the queen and breeding females have the ability to mate. Contrary to popular belief, some ant nests have multiple queens while others can exist without queens. Workers with the ability to reproduce are called "gamergates" and colonies that lack queens are then called gamergate colonies; colonies with queens are said to be queen-right.[42] The winged male ants, called drones, emerge from pupae along with the breeding females (although some species, like army ants, have wingless queens), and do nothing in life except eat and mate. During the short breeding period, the reproductives, excluding the colony queen, are carried outside where other colonies of similar species are doing the same. Then, all the winged breeding ants take flight. Mating occurs in flight and the males die shortly afterwards. Females of some species mate with multiple males. Mated females then seek a suitable place to begin a colony." That's all there is to ant sexual behavior, for most species. They fly out, mate, land, and start laying eggs. Dyanega (talk) 20:32, 20 July 2008 (UTC)

Taxobox image

I'm not a big fan of the photo currently being used in the taxobox. It's a bit out of focus and it doesn't show an ant in it's natural environment. Any thoughts on replacing it with a better image ? There are some pretty good images in commons. I like the primitive Myrmecia Image:Bullant_apr07.jpg personally but there several others that might be suitable. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:01, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I like the current image, parts are out of focus (the legs and tip of the abdomen) but the majority of the key features are in focus. the white background makes a nice contrast. I was considering flipping the image left/right so the ant looks into the text (WP:MOS#Images recommends that for the portraits). As for alternative suggestions Image:Formica high res.jpg is very nice , but taxbox images look best when they are longer than wide. GameKeeper (talk) 11:43, 26 July 2008 (UTC)

I suppose having more than 1 image in the taxobox is another option (see WP:Taxobox_usage#Images). Sean.hoyland - talk 06:38, 29 July 2008 (UTC)

Great dishwashers

In Ant#Relationship with humans perhaps mention that they make great dishwashers: rinse dish and leave outside. The next day I find the dish is squeaky clean, no oily residue remaining. Jidanni (talk) 00:55, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

Dishwashing ability varies greatly between species. For example, in my area

Various Pheidole - not really interested

Various Poneromorph ants - hopeless, staff shortage, poor communication skills

Various Leptanillinae - hopeless

Camponotus...of some sort - only willing to work at night and then only sends minor workers despite having hundreds of majors available

Weaver ant - Oecophylla - too busy fighting neighbours and you don't want those guys figuring out where you live

Some kind of Solenopsis - too busy killing things and avoiding weaver ants

Some kind of Technomyrmex - nice work

Ghost ant - Tapinoma melanocephalum - very good attention to detail, recommended.

Crazy ant - Paratrechina longicornis - the perfect ant for all your dishwashing needs and with the added bonus of predicting heavy rainfall hours in advance so you can bring your washing in...somehow.

I fear that including their dishwashing abilities may trigger calls for other additions like how useful they are for understanding quantum electrodynamics, combustion and various other processes with the help of a lens and a smallish star. Sean.hoyland - talk 13:32, 11 August 2008 (UTC)

It's too bad this can't be included in the article. This is why we need a Wiki-spin-off for personal research. Schwael (talk) 15:00, 20 September 2008 (UTC)

War

Shouldn't we note that ants engage in war? NerdyNSK (talk) 16:33, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

"War" is not a term that is well defined. Even humans use different kinds of terms "genocide", "mass killing", "mass destruction" etc. And journalistic articles use the term "war" for any conflict - like this one on chimpanzee wars [1] . There are conflicts between colonies of the same species of ants and predation/competion across species and you will find that it is mentioned in the article. The text you introduced talks about "the ant species" which is also problematic in usage. Hope you can see the reasons for the removal of the text. Cheers. Shyamal (talk) 16:53, 10 September 2008 (UTC)

Definition of "Invasive Species"

Article currently states:

"Some species, such as the red imported fire ant, are regarded as invasive species, since they can spread rapidly into new areas." [My bolding.]

Is an "invasive species" one which has the potential to colonize rapidly -- or the de facto state of being a foreign organism multiplying in a new habitat (due to human transportation)?

Odorous House Ants

In many parts of the world, odorous house ants are considered a major pest species.

The National Pest Management Association has an overview at http://www.pestworld.org/For-Consumers/Pest-Guide/Pest/Odorous-House-Ants. Many states in the US consider this species to be among the most common household ants- http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/PMG/PESTNOTES/pn7411.html#TABLE1.

Having been a sales inspector in Virginia for 11 years, I can say that this species is among the most prevalent in this region in terms of home infestations, accounting for 30% or more of the calls I would investigate.

{{editsemiprotected}}Please change "Ants classified as pests include the pavement ant, yellow crazy ant, sugar ants, the Pharaoh ant, carpenter ants, Argentine ant, imported fire ant and European fire ant." to "Ants classified as pests include the pavement ant, yellow crazy ant, sugar ants, the Pharaoh ant, carpenter ants, Argentine ant, odorous house ants, imported fire ant and European fire ant." —Preceding unsigned comment added by FrankZoid (talk • contribs) 21:06, 11 October 2008 (UTC)

Done. Clark89 (talk) 04:50, 12 October 2008 (UTC)

Number of Ants Known to Science, wrong # in article

the article says 12,000 classified estimated 14,000 known. I was just reading the California Academy of Sciences website and it said their are 22,000 ant species known to science. http://www.calacademy.org/science/heroes/bfisher/ —Preceding unsigned comment added by 71.232.119.19 (talk) 22:51, 27 October 2008 (UTC)

I'm not sure where that figure came from (or more specifically the 'known to science' part) given that it conflicts with the current statistics maintained by his organisation in antweb.org and other sources. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:59, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

The 22,000 number is an ESTIMATE, not the number of known species. The article gives the number of known species correctly. Dyanega (talk) 16:23, 28 October 2008 (UTC)

For interest, Brian Fisher kindly provided the following clarification of the 'There are an estimated 22,000 ant species known to science' statement in the CAS article.

"Known to Science is vague but does not mean "described" in this sense. There are, as of today, around 14,000 described ant species, but scientists know that in our collections there are a large number of undescribed species too."

Sean.hoyland - talk 01:59, 6 November 2008 (UTC)

social or eusocial?

Why does it say ants are social animals, but the word social links to eusocial, which is far better suited for them? Shouldn't it read "ants are eusocial" animals instead? Dream Focus (talk) 04:08, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I guess it's because social is less technical and more generic than eusocial...and I suppose ants are so diverse that some species barely even qualify as eusocial whereas others are type species for eusociality. Sean.hoyland - talk 04:27, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

what is 'terrestrial animal biomass'?

What is meant by terrestrial animal biomass? The article says "Ants dominate most ecosystems, and form 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass". Does it relate anyway with Biomass (ecology)? (If yes, then 15-20% sounds like too much). - manya (talk) 05:03, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Yes, same thing as Biomass (ecology). It might sound too much but the ref says "On average, ants monopolize 15–20% of the terrestrial animal biomass, and in tropical regions where ants are especially abundant, they monopolize 25% or more". Obviously it varies a lot and there probably aren't that many studies that address this specific issue but the ones I've seen concur with these figures, very approximately anyway. For OR interest, in my garden it's probably about 30%. Sean.hoyland - talk 05:24, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

It is a sub-set of biomass. So ants are not 15%-20% of all living things, only animals (not plants, fungus, bacteria etc) on solid land (no fish, whales, shellfish etc). There are probably not many animals in a typical backyard apart from insects and rodents, so i would not be suprised if it were even higher in that ecosystem.

With that in mind, it doesn't seem so huge , though still an impressive factoid.Yobmod (talk) 12:10, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

reproduction???

Where is info about reproduction?? How can it become featured article without info about reproduction?? Tubes2actor3 (talk) 08:53, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

I see you found it. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:20, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

ninja edit

As you can see from this diff the article was vandalised by what I would regard as a ninja edit and I reverted. Having said that, the ref cited p. 471 of what I assume is The Ants doesn't support the entire sentence strictly speaking because p. 471 is about symbiosis. We need to fix this at some point. Sean.hoyland - talk 09:33, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Iceland and Hawaii

I was hoping to find the answer to a long-held question of mine - are there currently any ants in the areas (such as Iceland and Hawaii) where they are not native? i.e. have they been brought in from other areas and now prevalent? The article doesn't quite make this clear. SteveRwanda (talk) 14:06, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Well, there's no escaping them. Hawaii Antweb, Hawaii Ant Group. Not sure about Iceland now but Hypoponera punctatissima made it there. I'd be amazed if there weren't any. Go and have a look. Bring a coat. Sean.hoyland - talk 14:35, 21 January 2009 (UTC)

Japanese

From the "In culture" section:

The Japanese character for ant, ari (蟻), is represented by an ideograph formed of the character for insect (虫) combined with the character 義 (giri), signifying moral rectitude, propriety. So the Japanese character could possibly be read as The Propriety-Insect.<ref>{{cite book |author=Hearn L|year=1904 |title=Kwaidan: Stories and studies Of strange things|publisher=Tuttle publishing (2005 reprint)|isbn=0804836620|pages=223}}</ref>

Firstly, 義 is gi, not giri; gi-ri is a compound, written 義理. Secondly, this "Japanese character" originated in China (as almost all of them did), and was formed on normal Chinese principles: one component represents the meaning (in this case 虫 "insect"), and the other represents the sound (in Mandarin 義 is yì and 蟻 is yǐ). It tells you nothing about the cultural perception of ants in either Japanese or Chinese culture.

The source cited is a book of folktales, not a book on linguistics or kanji, and is too outdated to be considered a reliable source. --Ptcamn (talk) 14:56, 21 January 2009 (UTC)