ABSTRACT
The inexpert eye may find the activity of individual ants in a colony chaotic and purposeless. It requires patience or time-lapse photography to obtain a perspective view and show how the apparent chaos is coordinated and productive. Perhaps in the same way the individual contributions of researchers, each investigating a limited aspect of the ecology and behavior of these astonishing insects may appear uncoordinated and fragmentary. It requires the advantage of time to see how these investigations knit together, reinforce and illuminate each other. We shall read the contributions collected here with profit, and come back to re-read them many times before we fully appreciate all that they reveal.
