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RE: Ants: The Good, the Bad and the Ugly
Awesome article. One of my Bio professors in college was convinced that ants would take over the world one day. It later turned out that he was just one million ants in a trench coat.
You didn't mention one of my favorite ant behaviors: Some species cultivate fungus for food. They're tiny insect farmers and surprisingly successful at it.
What a delight to have you stop by and mention this aspect of ant behavior. I finished the blog with the idea of writing an ant book. There must be so many out there, but this is such a rich topic. I think your Bio professor (million ants in a trench coat😂) may have been right!
Edit: I'm looking at my brief answer to you. Perhaps you can't tell by my answer that so much of what I read about ants led me to read more. I realized as I went along that one of my greatest challenges was going to be deciding what to leave out and what to leave in. Most people really don't want to know very much about ants, I think.
Yes, there are farmers--and self-exploding ants. Then there are the different types of colony organization. One area that interested me in particular was the mutualistic relationship between gut bacteria and some ants. But if I wrote an article about that I might have only one reader (you 🙂).
It is possible I'm a frustrated biologist.
Two!
I am so tempted. I discovered an interesting thread when I wrote the blog about ants in hospitals, but I have controlled myself. Two readers might be enough to go forward....:)
Ants are fascinating so I think you’d get a lot of readers no matter how much you write about them. I bet you could fill an entire post about the ant gut microbiome :)
Yes, I could! :))
😄