Talk:Ant

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[edit] exarate

you can find the word "exarate' in this article.

I'm sure most people don't know what this word means. I looked it up - it means 'plow up' or 'engrave'. It still makes no sense to me:

'...develop by complete metamorphosis, passing through larval and pupal stages (with the pupae being exarate) before they become adults.' —Preceding unsigned comment added by 84.9.45.215 (talk) 18:28, 2 March 2008 (UTC)

Because it's an entomological term, referring to the form of the pupa; some editor simply copied this text into the article from an entomological text, without realizing they might need to make a wikilink to explain the term. Most pupae are either exarate or pharate, the former having the appendages (all or some) free, unfused to the body, the latter having no free appendages. Ant and bee pupae are exarate, while butterflies and moths are pharate. Dyanega (talk) 21:46, 2 March 2008 (UTC)
The pupa link has the information on this and as of now exarate redirects there but maybe there should be wiktionary entries for exarate and obtect. Shyamal (talk) 09:01, 5 March 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Ants as sutures

The use of ants as a kind of suture sounds like a complete myth to me. I read the article cited at Note 69, but that article also does not cite its source for this idea. Google brings up a few other mentions of the same "ants as sutures" idea, but no solid citations. More suspicious: google produces absolutely no photos of this phenomenon. If it actually existed, it would certainly be worth a photo! -Wayne, 7 Apr 2008 —Preceding unsigned comment added by 81.207.149.47 (talk) 09:52, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

Here are some additional notes I found.

Shyamal (talk) 10:08, 7 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Images

The images are quite good in this article. The only ones I have an issue with are 3 near the end. These are in the Humans and ants section, but seem out of place there.

  1. Image:DirkvdM ants on a leaf.jpg , an OK picture but not appropriate here.
  2. Image:Rainforestants.jpg , a poor photo and out of context.
  3. Image:AntsDismemberingBigBug.jpg , again an OK picture but not appropriate here.

I found a few in other articles, etc.

  1. Image:Pharaoh Ant close up.JPG , you can hardly see the ant but thats almost the point. A Caption like "the tiny Pharaoh ant is a major pest in hospitals and office blocks, it can form nests between sheets of paper"
  2. Image:Leaf-cutting ant.jpg or Image:AntsStitchingLeave.jpg are IMHO superior to the above , but again not in context of humans & ants. (not that keen on these actually)
  3. Image:Miners.jpg or Image:Ant Farm Tunneling.jpeg Ants in a gel ant farm. (to illustrate Studying ants)

I'd like to find a nice 'ants as food' example. I have been looking on Flickr and Commons but not found anything worthy yet. GameKeeper (talk) 22:15, 9 April 2008 (UTC)

A potential find on flickr its a suitable CC license , ant eggs being sold for food in Thailand GameKeeper (talk) 22:38, 9 April 2008 (UTC)
I'm not so sure a picture of a gel ant farm would be suitable for illustrating the subject of studuying ants. Gel ant farms are not a good environment for ants to live in, merely a novelty. Calamarain (talk) 21:53, 11 April 2008 (UTC)
Fair enough. I was seduced by the fact that the photo was quite nice. Now removed. GameKeeper (talk) 19:51, 12 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] GA Sweeps

This article has been reviewed as part of Wikipedia:WikiProject Good articles/Project quality task force. I believe the article currently meets the criteria and should remain listed as a Good article. The article history has been updated to reflect this review. Regards, Corvus coronoides talk 14:09, 17 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nasa Gel

Hello, I just found the following pic, and according to the picture legend, this is a NASA's ant-friendly gel. I both think the article (protected) should include this image, and that an article "NASA's ant-friendly gel" should be create, citation:

These are harvester ants with powerful jaws. In a strange coincidence, a harvester ant colony has a comparable number of neurons as a human brain. There are about 1.6 million ants for every person on earth. The ants you see crawling around are all female. This gel farm was developed by NASA to survive Space Shuttle launches (sand would shift and crush the ants under many G’s). They wanted to study tunnel formation in microgravity. The gel does not collapse during launch, and it contains all the food and water the ants need. It also has some antibiotics and anti-fungal agents.

140.122.97.172 (talk) 11:12, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

I thought of including a similar image but as you can see in the Talk:Ant#Images section above it was pointed out that these are more novelties than serious ways to study ants. The NASA ant farm was an experiment suggested by high school children, there is something about it [here http://www.nasa.gov/centers/johnson/news/shuttle/sts-107/STS-107-08.html], on the mission which Columbia was destroyed whilst performing. I could not find any references to gel ant farms in any academic papers etc. Since this is a general page on ants I don't think such a specialist item should be here. There is already a page on ant farms or Formicarium which has a gel ant farm picture. GameKeeper (talk) 15:30, 28 April 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Other methods of recruitment

I thought it would be neat to add some information about other methods of recruitment that ants use, because not all ants make trails. I created a short article about tandem running. Would a more established user be willing to link these articles for me? Thanks! Michelanious (talk) 18:12, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

tandem running was already linked as a WP:REDLINK, so now you have created the article the link goes to your article. GameKeeper (talk) 19:50, 8 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Brazilian population eating ants

The source talks about the insect eating habits of the "INDIGENOUS POPULATIONS of Brazil"

But the article talks about "part of the population of Brazil". This is clearly misleading. The indigenous population of Brazil is a very small part of the population.

If the original article was about the native americans of US, the article would refer to them instead of saying "part of the population of US". —Preceding unsigned comment added by 201.41.10.61 (talk) 04:39, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

The source of this info contains many references to non-indigenous people also enjoying eating ants but also suggesting this was more common in the past than currently, perhaps it would be better to describe ants as 'traditionally eaten' and remove the 'part of the population'. GameKeeper (talk) 21:49, 30 May 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cladogram

I produced the following but it just looks awful if I try to insert it in the text anywhere as it is too big and breaks up the text. I wanted to associate it with the ant#Diversity section. Any ideas of what to do with it are welcome .GameKeeper (talk) 17:35, 1 June 2008 (UTC)

I bodged it into the navbox, I could not get the 1st label of Formicidae to work in the navbox so removed it. Since it duplicates and extends the info in subdvisions , perhaps the list of familys should be enturely replaced with the cladogram. GameKeeper (talk) 22:20, 2 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Cladogram of ant subfamilies

 
Formicidae (ants)

Leptanillinae


Amblyoponinae


Paraponerinae


Agroecomyrmecinae


Ponerinae


Proceratiinae





Ecitoninae


Aenictinae



Dorylini


Aenictogitoninae




Cerapachyinae*


Leptanilloidinae






Dolichoderinae


Aneuretinae




Pseudomyrmecinae


Myrmeciinae






Ectatomminae


Heteroponerinae



Myrmicinae


Formicinae





A cladogram showing one model of the extant ant subfamilies based on molecular phylogenetic studies. [1]Ant taxonomy remains ever-changing, and genetic analysis will continue to provide more information about the relatedness of the various species.
*Cerapachyinae is paraphyletic
  1. ^ Ward, Philip S. (December 21, 2007). "Phylogeny, classification, and species-level taxonomy of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae)". Zootaxa 1668: 549-563. 

[edit] disambig

Regurgitation and solenopsis need a disambig. Randomblue (talk) 21:07, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

Y Done GameKeeper (talk) 21:25, 6 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Spelling style

British English seems to be the way we are going. If all agree I'll tag this talk page with {{British-English}}. GameKeeper (talk) 09:06, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Yes, the page has been largely dealt with in the past by folks with a BrE leaning. Thanks. Shyamal (talk) 09:08, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] additional pictures.

there are a couple of ant images that I would like to include but I don't want to crowd the text. ( or confuse things this late into the WP:FAC).

If we were to lose anything to make way for these we may have too many ants collecting honeydew from various species images, however all of there nice images. GameKeeper (talk) 22:43, 7 June 2008 (UTC)

Commented out an image Image:Ant hole activity.jpg titled "Ant hole in a flurry of activity during swarming" inside the "Communication" section - artistic but there is also another swarming photograph. Maybe images in a zigzag layout would be nice. Shyamal (talk) 01:43, 8 June 2008 (UTC)
I've stuck with all on the right side for now. I could not resist adding those two images. GameKeeper (talk) 11:10, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Image placement

Can we have a few on the left rather than a "strip" down the right-hand side? Graham. GrahamColmTalk 15:01, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

Y Done GameKeeper (talk) 16:15, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Nevamped Intro

Does this belong in the Lead , it's not about Ants:

Some wingless female wasps of the family Mutillidae, known as velvet ants, can appear like large ants. Termites, sometimes called white ants, are not closely related to ants, although they have similar social structures.'

And the last sentence about computers needs some attention. (Despite losses ???) Graham. GrahamColmTalk 17:27, 8 June 2008 (UTC)

  • Apparently handled. Shyamal (talk) 06:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

[edit] Sections

The polymorphism section seems to fit as a subsection within morphology. Development is definitely not, have promoted the section. Wonder if a reordering is needed. Shyamal (talk) 06:45, 9 June 2008 (UTC)

I would support that. If that is done paragraph 2 from development should be moved to the 1st paragraph of Polymorphism as ant castes need to be explained before the current polymorphism paragraph. GameKeeper (talk) 19:55, 9 June 2008 (UTC)
Did this and found a few more stay sentences that seemed out of place. Taking a beak now. GameKeeper (talk) 21:07, 9 June 2008 (UTC)