Ant Encounters: Interaction Networks and Colony Behavior (Primers in Complex Systems)
One ofChoice's Outstanding Academic Titles for 2010"In her new book, written in a lively style and accessible to a general audience, Gordon describes the sophisticated experiments that led her to intriguing insights about how an ant colony can solve vital problems, such as finding the shortest path to the best food source, allocating workers to different tasks or defending a territory from rivals."--Times Higher Education"This volume provides a well-focused review of how complex biological systems develop and function, with applications well beyond understanding ant colonies. It may compel behavioral and community ecologists, as well as other non-biologists, to consider new perspectives in understanding interacting systems."--Choice"This concise, well-written book will be of interest to biologists and complexity scientists, but is written to also be accessible to non-scientists. . . .Ant Encountersis an enjoyable read, full of neat experiments and lively anecdotes illustrating the scientific points."--Elva J. H. Washington,Trends in Ecology and Evolution"[T]he good and easy to understand introduction to the role of interaction networks in colony behavior--or ants as a natural complex system based on interactions networks--as well as the style of writing makes the book an entertaining read."--Heike Feldhaar,Basic and Applied Ecology