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Book Cover for: The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct, Bert Hölldobler

The Leafcutter Ants: Civilization by Instinct

Bert Hölldobler

The Leafcutter Ants is the most detailed and authoritative description of any ant species ever produced. With a text suitable for both a lay and a scientific audience, the book provides an unforgettable tour of Earth's most evolved animal societies. Each colony of leafcutters contains as many as five million workers, all the daughters of a single queen that can live over a decade. A gigantic nest can stretch thirty feet across, rise five feet or more above the ground, and consist of hundreds of chambers that reach twenty-five feet below the ground surface. Indeed, the leafcutters have parlayed their instinctive civilization into a virtual domination of forest, grassland, and cropland--from Louisiana to Patagonia. Inspired by a section of the authors' acclaimed The Superorganism, this brilliantly illustrated work provides the ultimate explanation of what a social order with a half-billion years of animal evolution has achieved.

Book Details

  • Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company
  • Publish Date: Nov 15th, 2010
  • Pages: 192
  • Language: English
  • Edition: undefined - undefined
  • Dimensions: 8.30in - 6.30in - 0.49in - 0.78lb
  • EAN: 9780393338683
  • Categories: Animals - Insects & Spiders

About the Author

Hölldobler, Bert: - Bert Hölldobler is Foundation Professor at Arizona State University and the recipient of numerous awards, including the Pulitzer Prize and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize. He lives in Arizona and Germany.
Wilson, Edward O.: - Edward O. Wilson (1929-2021) was the author of more than thirty books, including Anthill, Letters to a Young Scientist, and The Conquest of Nature. The winner of two Pulitzer Prizes, Wilson was a professor emeritus at Harvard University and lived with his wife in Lexington, Massachusetts.

More books by Bert Hölldobler

Book Cover for: The Superorganism: The Beauty, Elegance, and Strangeness of Insect Societies, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: The Guests of Ants: How Myrmecophiles Interact with Their Hosts, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: Journey to the Ants: A Story of Scientific Exploration, Bert Hölldobler
Book Cover for: The Ants, Bert Hölldobler