The Bell Museum of Natural History U sing insect traps, sprays and even shoe heels can kill a few ants. But rarely can they wipe out an entire colony. Their highly organized structures and communication makes ants resilient said Berthold H lldobler, an ant expert and Pulitzer prize-winning author, during a lecture Wednesday at the Bell Museum of Natural History. H lldobler, chair of behavioral physiology and sociobiology at the Theodor Boveri Institute for Bioscience at the University of W rzberg in Germany, lectured to a crowd of about 350 on how ants communicate.
Ants develop a social system that helps keep their population growing.
Such a structure only develops in 3 percent of all species, he said. H lldobler backed up his statement by adding that ants are so numerous that their total weight is equal to that of all humans. The estimated 20,000 ant species make up 75 percent of the total insect biomass. The key features contributing to the system's success are communication and cooperation, he added. There are two main ways they communicate.