Animal Behavior: Ants

Abstract

It is clear that Deborah Gordon is passionate about ants. Not only that, but she has spent a great deal of time both in the field and in the library doing research on these fascinating creatures. She begins the book by describing the colony as a complex and agrees with Latreille (1798), who stated that ants are of one mind separated into many bodies. She goes on to state that ““ants see poorly, and they rely on chemical cues”” (p. 4). This is the main method of communication used by colonies, although all ants use a slightly different variation of the colony system. Reading further, one can see Gordon's many years in the field as she goes on to talk about the colony system: ““I realized that a colony's behavior changed over the years, as the colony grew older and larger”” (p. 8).This book not only allows the reader to experience Gordon's joy in entomology, but also serves as a valuable resource for facts about ants. For instance, 11,000 species of ants have been identified (p. 14), all ants live in colonies (p. 15), all ants divide labor among different worker types (p. 25), ants change jobs as they age (p. 33), ants respond mainly to smell (p. 37), ants have about 15 glands in their bodies (p. 40), some ants have a great capacity for remembering information (p. 59), there are ants that are sophisticated farmers (p. 72), ant colonies can be older than 25 years (p. 77), there are invader ants that resemble 16th-century pirates (p. 113), and ants have evolved in response to plants in many fascinating ways and continue to do so (chapter 6).Gordon seems to be one of the pioneers in ant behavioral ecology. She is a great author to choose to inspire young female scientists that may be moving toward studying biology. She states, ““I introduced the phrase ‘‘task allocation’’ to describe how the work of an ant colony is organized”” (p. 24). A great deal of her research, which is described in the book, whether it is conducted in the laboratory or as a manipulation of factors in the wild, takes advantage of her natural ingenuity. This is something that is quickly apparent to the reader. She loves her study animals. She finds them intriguing. She certainly does not know everything about them but this does not bother her at all. She seems to relish the fact that there is more to learn about ants each year.Finally, Gordon's book is an excellent example of some of the collaboration that can go on in the scientific community. She states that many times she has worked with other scientists. For instance, Elizabeth Pringle and Rodolfo Dirzo worked with her in Mexico to study the ant Cordia alliodora (p. 125). With Fred Adler, she examined path shape and information exchanged between ants (p. 69). Mark Brown worked with Gordon to examine foraging and colony interaction in a laboratory setting (p. 103). With Steve Pacala and Charles Godfrey, Gordon examined how foragers are successful and how they are able to encourage inactive ants to be more successful foragers (p. 60). This turned out to be accomplished using a chemical cue secreted from an abdominal gland. Alone, Gordon examined colony age and its relationship to the number of ants in the colony (p. 87). This is just one of many, many experiments Gordon conducted in her over 20 years in the field.Gordon writes at a level that is approachable for both high school and college readers. She is an excellent inspiration to female students, especially to students contemplating going into field work. This book is also good to use as a resource for scientific papers as well as for general reading. There is a lot of information in the early chapters of the book that Gordon has synthesized from widespread sources. Overall, this is a wonderful resource for teachers and students alike.