Zombie ants controlled by fungus

In a bizarre parasitic death sentence, a fungus turns carpenter ants into the walking dead and gets them to die in a spot that's perfect for the fungus to grow and reproduce.

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Texas' `crazy' ants: Ag pest or urban annoyance?

A species of ant that has ruined sewage pumps, fouled computers and made it difficult for homeowners to enjoy their yards has a new target: the honeybee.

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New weapon turns fire ants into headless zombies

Researchers in Texas are trying an unusual approach to combat fire ants — deploying parasitic flies that turn the pesky and economically costly insects into zombies whose heads fall off.

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Ants swarm over Houston area, fouling electronics

In what sounds like a really low-budget horror film, voracious swarming ants that apparently arrived in Texas aboard a cargo ship are invading homes and yards across the Houston area, shorting out electrical boxes and messing up computers.

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Scientists Offer Dire Forecast for Earth

Within a couple of decades hundreds of millions of people won't have enough water, top scientists will say......By 2050, polar bears will mostly be found in zoos, their habitats gone.

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Man Sentenced for Ant Abuse Punishment

A college business professor who allegedly punished one of his children by covering the boy with ants and putting pepper juice in his eyes has been sentenced to two years in prison for child abuse.

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Colombia's Big-Butt Ants Entice Gourmets

The first loud crackle tastes and feels like popcorn, but by the time the juices spray wildly in your mouth and the filament-like legs slide down your throat, there's no mistaking this toasted ant queen.

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"Can ants count? Not out loud they can't. Not the way you and I count. But an ingenious experiment conducted in the Sahara suggests maybe ants do count.

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Helpful acts, such as grooming or foster parenting, are common throughout the animal kingdom, but accounts of animals rescuing one another from danger are exceedingly rare, having been reported in the scientific literature only for dolphins, capuchin monkeys, and ants.

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Conservationists in Northumberland have used satellite technology to pinpoint 69 rare ants' nests before work to fell thousands of trees begins. The nests, made of conifer needles, are home to the hairy northern wood ant.

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Dr Elva Robinson and colleagues in the University's School of Biological Sciences fitted rock ants with tiny radio-frequency identification tags, each measuring 1 / 2,000 (one two-thousandth) the size of a postage stamp, then observed as they chose between a poor nest nearby and  …

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This article describes an amazing example of manipulation of host behavior by a parasite. The fungus Ophiocordyceps unilateralis is a parasite of arboreal Camponotus leonardi ants.

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A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered.

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A single mega-colony of ants has colonised much of the world, scientists have discovered. Argentine ants living in vast numbers across Europe, the US and Japan belong to the same interrelated colony, and will refuse to fight one another.

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Deby Cassill of the University of South Florida in St Petersburg, US teamed with colleagues Skye Brown and Devon Swick of the same university, and George Yanev of the University of Texas in Arlington, US to study the sleeping patterns of the fire ant Solenopsis invicta.

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A decades-long battle against invasive fire ants in the southern U.S. might be turning a corner, thanks to a nightmarish little fly.

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Researchers in Texas are trying an unusual approach to combat fire ants - deploying parasitic flies that turn the pesky and economically costly insects into zombies whose heads fall off.

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Dr. Anna Dornhaus finds that not every ant in the colony is working up to standards. It may be that some ants are getting a free ride.

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Eat them alive, or at least get predatory ants to do it for us – that's the latest proposal for dealing with the invasion of tropical Australia by toxic cane toads.

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An Amazonian ant has dispensed with sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found.

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In our world, males are rather essential to the survival of the species. But ants can get along just fine without them. Scientists have discovered that one species of tropical ant is exclusively female.

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"Men, who needs them?" is a question sometimes uttered by frustrated women, but a widespread species of tropical ant has taken that position to the extreme by becoming asexual and only producing females, according to a new study.

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Ants are smart. They work as a team and they communicate with the best interests of the group in mind. And if they could drive, they would do so better than humans.

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An Amazonian ant has dispensed of sex and developed into an all-female species, researchers have found. The ants reproduce via cloning - the queen ants copy themselves to produce genetically identical daughters.

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Background

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Advances in audio technology have enabled scientists to discover that ants routinely talk to each other in their nests.

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The Arab fabrications and spinning is now in overdrive, as the terrorist-associated media has article after article each with more ridiculous claims than the one before.

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A new ant which was discovered less than 20 years ago could be on the way to wreak havoc in parks and gardens of Northern Europe including Britain, according to a report published today.

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A great book for naturalists, natural philosophers and myrmecologists alike.

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Recent discoveries of water and Earth-like soil on Mars have set imaginations running wild that human beings may one day colonise the Red Planet. However, the first inhabitants might not be human in form at all, but rather swarms of tiny robots.

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A Brazilian ant colony leaves some members out in the cold each night — literally. Tasked with closing the nest door from the outside, these ants complete their final mission and wander off, never to be seen again, researchers report in the November American Naturalist.

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Ants don't make very good meals. They're tiny, not all that nutritious and many have evolved an array of morphological, chemical and behavioral adaptations to make predators pay.

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