Ant links to check out

• Linnaeus' Legacy 15: Sorting it all out

"The latest edition of Linnaeus' Legacy is up at Greg Laden's Blog. This month's keywords: Not, a third of it is in Latin, now you get it for free, dahlias, something about the way, littlest sauropodomorph, martini, can of worms, Jocko, finches on mescaline, wench, tricks, oriole, parrots, bucket full of gasoline, extinction"

• Species compensation maintains abundance and raid rates of African swarm-raiding army ants in rainforest fragments

"Our study demonstrates that habitat fragmentation may have a differential effect on two ecologically highly similar keystone species. Moreover, it shows that species compensation might help in maintaining an important ecosystem function (i.e. raiding by swarm-raiding army ants) in fragmented tropical rainforests."

• How cheating ants give themselves away

"According to research findings published in the journal Current Biology on Jan. 8, hydrocarbons on the outside cuticle of fertile ants form 'a particular chemical signature blend.' A cocktail that an ant apparently can't deny, cover up, or lie about and which brands a cheater much like the red "A" on the bosom of Hester Prynne in Nathaniel Hawthorne's 'The Scarlet Letter.'"

• Evolution of the Neotropical ant genus Linepithema by Alex Wild

• Origin of Species read along
  

Look! Pretty pictures!

You know how you get sometimes when you have been working on a revision of a revision of a revision and you are just so tired of the stupid thing you can barely even look at it let alone work on it? Well, that is where I am right now. So... here are some pretty pics of a leafcutter ant mating swarm in Arizona from (who else?) myrmecos.

Ants Digging the Web

While looking for info on Ants, Nature's Secret Power, I stumbled across this post comparing ants laying trails to social voting sites like Digg and Reddit. Ants do everything first!