The Leafcutter Ants Book

My copy of The Leafcutter Ants by Bert Hölldobler and E.O. Wilson came today.


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I had to laugh. The blurb on the back starts out: “The Leafcutter Ants is the most detailed and authoritative description of any ant species ever produced.” This is a skimpy book. At 160 pages, it is about the size of your standard paperback. Comparing it to Walter Tschinkel’s hefty 723 page tome on the fire ant, Solenopsis invicta, I figure it must be the authoritative part they are referring to… 🙂

The authors state that the book was inspired by the chapter on leafcutter ants from their book The Superorganism. This book definitely includes some of the same photographs and figures as the chapter, but they have added more spectacular photographs, including a few by Alex Wild at Myrmecos.

I can’t wait to delve into it further to see what’s new.

Are you reading The Leafcutter Ants yet? What do you think?

By the way, Alex Wild found a cool video about leafcutter ants at his blog.

Paperback: 160 pages
Publisher: W. W. Norton & Company; Original edition (November 15, 2010)
ISBN-10: 0393338681
ISBN-13: 978-0393338683

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