page_title: Ant
section_title: In science and technology
hierarchical_section_title: Ant / Relationship with humans / In science and technology
caption_attribution_description: Camponotus nearcticus spp. travelling between two connected formicariums: a Nucleus (made by Tar Heels Ants) and a Vintage Ant Farm (made by Uncle Milton). I clicked this picture on December 20, 2014.
context_page_description: Ants are eusocial insects of the family Formicidae and, along with the related wasps and bees, belong to the order Hymenoptera. Ants appear in the fossil record across the globe in considerable diversity during the latest Early Cretaceous and early Late Cretaceous, suggesting an earlier origin. Ants evolved from vespoid wasp ancestors in the Cretaceous period, and diversified after the rise of flowering plants. More than 12,500 of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified. They are easily identified by their elbowed antennae and the distinctive node-like structure that forms their slender waists.
  Ants form colonies that range in size from a few dozen predatory individuals living in small natural cavities to highly organised colonies that may occupy large territories and consist of millions of individuals. Larger colonies consist of various castes of sterile, wingless females, most of which are workers, as well as soldiers and other specialised groups. Nearly all ant colonies also have some fertile males called "drones" and one or more fertile females called "queens".
context_section_description: Observed by humans since the dawn of history, the behaviour of ants has been documented and the subject of early writings and fables passed from one century to another. Those using scientific methods, myrmecologists, study ants in the laboratory and in their natural conditions. Their complex and variable social structures have made ants ideal model organisms. Ultraviolet vision was first discovered in ants by Sir John Lubbock in 1881. Studies on ants have tested hypotheses in ecology and sociobiology, and have been particularly important in examining the predictions of theories of kin selection and evolutionarily stable strategies. Ant colonies may be studied by rearing or temporarily maintaining them in formicaria, specially constructed glass framed enclosures. Individuals may be tracked for study by marking them with dots of colours.
  The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems, for example Ant colony optimization and Ant robotics. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage, and networking algorithms.
caption: Camponotus nearcticus workers travelling between two formicaria through connector tubing
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