ants
- Communication versus waterproofing: the physics of insect cuticular hydrocarbons
Summary: Cuticular hydrocarbons protect insects from desiccation and allow chemical communication, and contain both liquid and solid parts. This complex phase behaviour appears vital to ensure biological functioning.
- The internal maps of insects
Summary: Insect behaviour can be explained as a combination of path integration, vector memory and view memory, but what is the evidence that these geometric capabilities form an integrated map?
- The choreography of learning walks in the Australian jack jumper ant Myrmecia croslandi
Summary: Ants learn about the location of their nest during highly choreographed learning walks. They systematically scan the scene alternating between looking toward and away from the nest from different compass bearings.
- Compass cues used by a nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas
Summary: The nocturnal bull ant, Myrmecia midas, uses multiple cues to navigate and appears to rely heavily on landmark information for navigation.
- Head roll stabilisation in the nocturnal bull ant Myrmecia pyriformis: implications for visual navigation
Summary: Navigating ants keep their head horizontally aligned, but not perfectly so, which has consequences for visual navigation.
- Resistance to nutritional stress in ants: when being fat is advantageous
Highlighted Article: More fat, live longer: positive association between fat content and lifespan in ants.
- Private information alone can trigger trapping of ant colonies in local feeding optima
Summary: Route memories alone can trigger ‘trapping’ of ant colonies in suboptimal exploitation of established but poorer-quality food sources, even when pheromone trails are removed.