Myrmecology

Ants learned to work with fungi back in a world where only fungi could thrive.

Infected wounds pose a major mortality risk in animals and are common in predatory ants. Here, the authors show that M. analis ants apply antimicrobial compounds produced in the metapleural glands to treat infected wounds and reduce nestmate mortality.

Over the past four centuries quadrillions of ants have created a strange and turbulent global society that shadows our own

[June 3, 2023: Staff Writer, The Brighter Side of News] An ant holds an oak gall containing wasp larvae. Researchers discovered an elaborate relationship among ants, wasps and oak trees. (CREDIT: Andrew Deans, Penn State) Penn State scientists, thanks to 8-year old Hugo Dean's curiousity, have dis...

The survival strategies employed by one of the most aggressive, territorial and venomous ant species may pave the way to revolutionize robotics, medicine and engineering.

The African Matabele ants are often injured in fights with termites. Their conspecifics recognise when the wounds become infected and initiate antibiotic treatment.

Laboratory studies on insects face the dual challenge of maintaining organisms under artificial conditions, and in reduced spaces while mimicking the species’ ecological requirements as much as possible. Over decades, myrmecologists have developed and continuously improved laboratory methods and art...