The trade-off between quality and quantity is a fundamental economic dilemma. Now, a team of British, American, and Japanese researchers describes how it applies to biology, as well. They have ...

How did ants take over the world? The answer may be skin deep. By Cara Giaimo Cara Giaimo recently reported on ants that had found a loophole in a fundamental rule of life. If life is a numbers game, ...

Ants, by contrast, have been using antibiotics for tens of millions of years, and they might hold the key to using these powerful drugs more wisely." Ants as a source of antibiotics The team looked at ...

An ant’s life cycle starts as a tiny egg. It hatches into a larva which is like a small worm without eyes or legs. It grows quickly and depends on adult worker ants to feed it. These workers decide ...

Research shows that some ant species have learned how to treat their wounds, revealing one of the clearest examples of medical behavior outside humans. Medicine has been considered a uniquely human ...

Queen ant pupae did not because, the researchers theorize, they have stronger immune systems and could better survive infection. This research dovetails with another finding from earlier this year in ...

Sick young ants release a smell to tell worker ants to destroy them to protect the colony from infection, scientists said Tuesday, adding that queens do not seem to commit this act of self-sacrifice.

A pesky pest has invaded Central Texas. The invasive tawny crazy ants form large colonies, taking out other species like fire ants, spiders and scorpions. Some Texas residents have reported spotting ...

Biologist E.O. Wilson once wrote that "ants are the most warlike of all animals," noting that clashes between ant colonies dwarfed the human battles at Waterloo and Gettysburg. But sometimes ant ...

A sneaky, stealthy parasite queen can turn an ant colony against itself. Newly-mated queens of two parasitic ant species have been found to sneak into an ant colony, creep towards the resident ant ...

Researchers detail a parasitic strategy, first observed in a blog post, where an invading ant queen uses a chemical spray to compel host workers into killing their own mother Researchers report on a ...

Bumble bees battling invasive Argentine ants may win individual fights but ultimately lose valuable foraging time, putting pressure on colonies already strained by habitat loss, disease, and ...