ABSTRACT
The term super ant has been applied to this well-known social insect, which in spite of its relatively small brain has evolved an amazingly successful lifestyle (Chapter 5). One of the secrets to the success of ants that might apply to humans is that of specialization of tasks that maximize the efciency of the colony. Nurse ants feed and clean the queen, maintaining a healthy environment in the nursery. Warriors fend off invaders while food gatherers feed the colony. Farmer ants grow edible fungi in the humid interior of the mound and morticians remove the dead. When the most specialized of all ants, the queen, dies prematurely, the colony often collapses. Thus, the queen’s extreme longevity of up to twenty years (about twenty times longer than that of a worker) is of great selective advantage in the world of ants. The selective value of longevity for humans remains unknown, although numerous theories have been proposed.
