Even with no one in charge, army ants work collectively to build bridges out of their bodies. New research reveals the simple rules that lead to such complex group behavior. Army ants form colonies of ...

Muratore has been studying how army ants build bridges by linking their bodies, which could give scientists insights into controlling swarms of robots. She presented her work at a meeting of the ...

Lutz said that future research based on this work might compare these findings to the living bridges of another army ant species, E. burchellii, to determine if the same principles are in action. The ...

In the future, Reid’s group plans to work with Harvard computer scientist Radhika Nagpal, who thinks the kind of thinking, calculating architecture that army ants are capable of would be useful ...

Fire ants link together to make frighteningly effective rafts, for example, and some army ants seem to instinctively ... maintaining a set ratio of soldiers to workers. How such ant caste systems ...

A worker caste of honey-pot ants called repletes swell into tiny balls to store food collected by foragers. Army ants move in columns, eating all other insects and small animals in their path. Ants ...

When the pupae emerge from their cases and the eggs hatch, the cycle continues with a new batch of workers, a new litter of babies, and a new nomadic phase. While army ants are often seen as a ...

(Much like termites, which cause far more severe damage.) Some species, such as army ants, defy the norm and do not have permanent homes. (Why invasive ants are a bigger threat than previously ...