Hiding in plain sight: common fungi in red wood ant colonies
Ant colonies can be dense, which may have some hidden costs. Pathogens and parasites find rich pickings in these tightly packed societies, and some have...
Myrmecological News Blog
Cloning the competition: Jonathan Romiguier on the bizarre world of Messor harvester ants
In a groundbreaking study, “One mother for two species via obligate cross-species cloning in ants”, Jonathan Romiguier – an evolutionary biologist at the University of...
More aggressive while invading?
In this interview, Defu Chen describes his recent study, in Myrmecological News, “Changes in the aggressiveness of invasive red imported fre ants towards native ants:...
Microbes, nectar, and ants–oh my!
Ants play crucial roles in the ecosystems they inhabit and can affect the microbial communities living in the nectar of flowering plants, from their compositions...
‘Hell Ant’ fossil unearthed in museum collection becomes the oldest known ant specimen
In their article, “A hell ant from the Lower Cretaceous of Brazil” the authors report the oldest known Haidomyrmecinae, preserved as a rock impression in...
Chromosomes and cryptic species: Revealing hidden diversity in Strumigenys ants
Understanding species boundaries is one of the central challenges in modern taxonomy, particularly in groups containing morphologically similar species. In their study on Neotropical Strumigenys...
Best Paper Award 2025
In 2026, Myrmecological News awards for the eighth time the Best Paper of the previous year. From January 7th to January 21th, the editorial board...
Highlighting the big impacts of tiny engineers
In their recently published review “Ground-nesting ants as engineers of microbial landscape”, Longmeyer et al. compiled our current scientific knowledge about ground-nesting ants and their...
Microbes, molecules, and mates: Unraveling nestmate recognition in Pheidole megacephala
How do ants identify who is a nest mate vs. who is not? Cuticular hydrocarbons (CHCs) have been demonstrated to drive such recognition. In the...
Digging through the desert to uncover the secrets – and the knowledge gaps – of honeypot ants
Honeypot ants are iconic in the ant world and beyond for both their visual appearance and their fascinating lifestyle. Highly specialized workers with astonishing enlarged...
Sweet but not so simple: How sugar changes the temper of Asian weaver ants
Have you ever wondered why some ants get aggressive over a drop of sugar, while others don’t react as much? In their fascinating study, “The...
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