The Ants

Rating:
Summary: The Ultimate Ant Resource
Review: If you're interested in ants and mymecology (the study of ants) then, this is the ultimate and definitive work on the subject, and a must have acquisition for all amateur and professional entomologists, mymecologists, and naturalists.

The authors leave no stone unturned in regards to this group of fascinating insects and explore every facet of the life history of ants. Ecology, biology, behavior, communication, sociality, etc. Buy the book!


Rating:
Summary: Not for the amateur
Review: Of course this is a great book. But it's also very big...and very technical. I know more about insects than the normal person and I was lost after the first couple pages. If you want a neat ant book read Journey to the Ants. It's more down to earth and easier to read and written by the same people. I wouldn't try to tackle this until you got a few entomology courses under your belt....

Rating:
Summary: Not for the amateur
Review: Of course this is a great book. But it's also very big...and very technical. I know more about insects than the normal person and I was lost after the first couple pages. If you want a neat ant book read Journey to the Ants. It's more down to earth and easier to read and written by the same people. I wouldn't try to tackle this until you got a few entomology courses under your belt....

Rating:
Summary: Complete and Thorough
Review: Packed with Color illustrations, diagrams and tables of the most comprehensive data ever collected!

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This book is an excellent reference and guide to ants in general, and for every little ant in the world that you can find!

Rating:
Summary: Getting to know the Other/s
Review: This breathtaking book... I am a literary scholar and dipped into the incredible coverage of the taxonomy, anatomy and esp. the behaviour of ants contained in this expansive book with relish. It's one of those books that is simply mesmerizing - nobody will blame you for that hanging jaw.

My brother is a brilliant South African lepidopterist and ecologist- has co-published in "Taxon". He is now involved in a mermycology(?) study. He can not afford this book but to say that he needs it, an understatement. Is someone out there mad & beautiful enough to help him obtain a copy? Email me: [e-mail]. I will put you in touch with him at his university.

Rating:
Summary: Excellent
Review: This is a book that makes you want to drop everything and dedicate all your time to the study of ants. There are not too many books out there that are so well-written that they induce such emotions. It is a sizable book, and for those outside the field of myrmecology, it probably would not be read cover-to-cover. But every page of this book is fascinating, and considering the time and effort the authors put into it, it is no surprise that it has been the target of numerous awards. The authors dedicate the book to the "next generation of myrmecologists", and no doubt they have convinced many individuals to take up the field. The authors convey to the reader that the study of ants is a thriving field, and there are lots of research questions unanswered in their study.
Space prohibits a detailed review, so I will list instead the parts of the book that I consider most interesting: 1. The variation in the mode of colony founding among the different species of ants. 2. The mating habits of ants, in particular the female-calling and aggregation syndromes. 3. The description of the experiment showing the role of male pheromones in carpenter ants. 4. The statistical analysis of the time of swarming. 5. The comparison between different hypotheses for polyandry. 6. The universal occurence across species of 'nanitics' or 'minims' in the first brood and their ergonomic advantages. 7. The parental manipulation and offspring consent hypotheses for the origin of worker castes. 8. Eusociality and chromosome number as a strategy for reducing genetic variance. 9. The role of learning in colony-level recognition. 10. The presence of conflict between queens and workers in the management of new queens and males. 11. The existence of modulatory communication in ants (this was definitely the most interesting discussion in the book ). 12. The steps in the evolution of physical castes. 13. The result that colony-level selection is the opposite of what one would expect from individual-level selection, the later tending to improving phenotypes. 14. The use of allometric space to model evolutionary optimization. 15. The capability of associative learning in ants. 16. Ant-termite warfare. 17. The entire chapter on army ants.

Rating:
Summary: The Ants
Review: This is a wonderful account of the ingenious adaptions, devices, and inventions of the small creatures called ants. To read the text and examine the drawings and photos is to be given a glimpse of how complex and beuatiful life on this earth is. I must confess that I did not read all of the text, but I will say: Holldobler and Wilson have given us a book that is exhaustive on the subject of ants and thought-provoking as to the possibilities of evolution in general.

Rating:
Summary: Excelent book!
Review: This is an excellent book. If you love ants, or you are starting to study them, or simply like to read excellent science books, this one's for you. It is very well written, and, although it is technical in many aspects, it is a delight to read it. It is full of pictures, diagrams and graphs of almost any aspect you can imagine. Almost any subject that the book addresses is explained at length in a clear and understandable way. However, there are some parts of it where you need some background in biology and mathematics to understand the book.

Both Holldobler and Wilson, who have a strong background in ant studies, have outdone themselves. In this book you can learn about virtually any aspects concerning ants, from their anatomy to their classification and more. And besides this, the book also teaches a lot of things not only related to ants but more general, like evolution and kin selection (applied not only to ants but also to eusocial insects). Learning so much about the ants makes you change your viewpoint about this little animal and makes you think about how incredible nature (or God) is to create such beautiful, incredible animals.