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Written by the authors of the Pulitzer Prize winning The Ants, this book is both an overview of myrmecology and an eloquent tale of the authors' pursuit of their subjects. The authors interweave their personal accounts with information on the social lives of ants and their evolutionary achievements. A tour of formicid biodiversity is given, from social parasites to army ants, nomadic hunters, camouflaged huntresses, and builders of temperature-controlled skyscrapers.
- The dominance of ants
- For the love of ants
- The life and death of the colony
- How ants communicate
- War and foreign policy
- The ur-ants
- Conflict and dominance
- The origin of cooperation
- The superorganism
- Social parasites - Breaking the ode
- The trophobionts
- Army ants
- The strangest ants
- How ants control their environment
- Epilogue - who will survive?
- How to study ants
Bert Hölldobler is now Foundation Professor of Biology at Arizona State University; formerly Chair of Behavioral Physiology and Sociology at the Theodor Boveri Institute, University of Wurzburg. He is also the recipient of the U.S. Senior Scientist Prize of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation and the Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz Prize of the German government. Until 1990, he was the Alexander Agassiz Professor of Zoology at Harvard University.
Edward O. Wilson was Pellegrino University Professor, Emeritus, at Harvard University. In addition to two Pulitzer Prizes (one of which he shares with Bert Hölldobler), Wilson won many scientific awards, including the National Medal of Science and the Crafoord Prize of the Royal Swedish Academy of Sciences.
"Beautifully written and illustrated [...] These fifteen chapters are a bustling but well-organized ant heap, full of wonders natural and intellectual."
– Philip Morrison, Scientific American
"Everyone should read Journey to the Ants; it is a book to read right through; I have done so twice so far. It brings back the joy of science and restores the sense of wonder, it is truly food for thought. For me it is a beloved book that will stay at my bedside."
– James E. Lovelock, Times Higher Education Supplement
"Hölldobler and Wilson have carefully distilled more than 80 years of their combined personal research and thorough knowledge of the literature to produce a book that is both packed with ideas and information and a joy to read. The authors subtitled their book 'A Story of Scientific Exploration' and, like all good stories, it has a logical progression and sensible themes and is hard to put down."
– C. Ronald Carroll, American Scientist
