Talk:Ant

Overly technical

Flagged as overly technical: "the introduction especially should be understandable by educated people without having to follow links". This is a comparatively general article covering tens of thousands of species called ANTS. So it is a starting point for many people—educated but not biologists—who want to know more about ants. I have flagged the introduction but the same argument applies throughout the article. Humphrey Tribble (talk) 03:43, 6 June 2022 (UTC)

Can you point to specific wording that you find overly technical? I am not an entomologist and I found it very readable. Given it's FA-status, I'd err on the side of "it's fine" and remove the template soon unless someone can point out problematic wording/phrasing. WhinyTheYounger (WtY)(talk, contribs) 01:37, 3 July 2022 (UTC)

I agree with WhinyTheYounger. I'm neither an entomologist nor a scientist of any sort, nor someone with much science background at all. This is an excellent article, easy to read, easy to understand, and with tons of super interesting information. This is the first time I've ever seen a note of "overly technical", and imho it would be a mistake to dumb down this article. The information, while detailed, is very readable. Whoever has the authority or the standing or whatever to remove that 'overly technical' note should remove it. 2607:FEA8:129D:E00:C513:4958:177C:FA68 (talk) 05:34, 3 August 2022 (UTC)

Ant to vertebrate biomass information flaws

From biomass information in the Cattle wikipedia article:

"It has been estimated that out of all animal species on Earth, Bos taurus has the largest biomass at roughly 400 million tonnes, followed closely by Euphausia superba (Antarctic krill) at 379 million tonnes, and Homo sapiens (humans) at 373 million tonnes."

From this article:

"Their ecological dominance is demonstrated by their biomass: Ants are estimated to contribute 15–20 % (on average and nearly 25% in the tropics) of terrestrial animal biomass, exceeding that of the vertebrates.[25] Myrmecologist E. O. Wilson estimated that the total number of individual ants alive in the world at any one time is between one and ten quadrillion (short scale) (i.e., between 10^15 and 10^16). According to this estimate, the total biomass of all the ants in the world is approximately equal to the total biomass of the entire human race.[26] According to this estimate, there are also approximately 1 million ants for every human on Earth.[27] A 2022 study based on a systematic sampling dataset suggested a higher figure of 20 quadrillion ants on earth at any given time."

The statement "...exceeding that of the vertebrates." seems substantially incorrect even if the 20 quadrillion ant estimate is used. I reasonably read (close skim of unrelated elements) reference 25 at https://NCBI.NLM.NIH.Gov/pmc/articles/PMC34089/ but found no suggestion that ants exceed the biomass of vertebrates - the reference doesn't seem to support that aspect of the biomass statements in this Wikipedia article.

Consider that cattle and Homo Sapiens each by themselves seem to very roughly equal ant biomass before accounting for any other vertebrates (discounting fish and sea mammals in vast waters where no ants reside), so quite rough though biomass accounting appears to be, ants seem to rank at less than half of the mass of non-aquatic vertebrates - perhaps substantially less. (And much less than that for all Earth vertebrates, and further less for all Earth biomass.)

In addition in many uses "terrestrial" excludes animals which are aquatic, arboreal, or aerial. The aquatic exclusion could be used, but many ants are aerial or arboreal in some measure, so "terrestrial" fails to provide specifically defined boundaries as required for ant and other animal biomass accounting. (In my view reference 25 is also flawed in that regard.)

So, though imperfectly aligned to reference 25, but evidently much more accurate overall, I suggest revising that first sentence to:

'Their ecological significance is suggested by their biomass: Ants are estimated to contribute 15–20 % (on average and nearly 25% in the tropics) of non-aquatic animal biomass.[25]'

I'll await reactions that my sense of this seems either correct or flawed, or other comments, for a week or two before revising that sentence in the article.

Cheers! --H Bruce Campbell (talk) 13:06, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Like in the past discussions on the topic, it is unclear if the vertebrate estimates are based on dry weight or if they used live weight (about 70% water for mammals, much lower for insects). Shyamal (talk) 14:01, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

PS: The most recent work is quite clear that this is dry weight - "we conservatively estimate 20 × 1015 (20 quadrillion) ants on Earth, with a total biomass of 12 megatons of dry carbon. This exceeds the combined biomass of wild birds and mammals and equals 20% of human biomass." https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2201550119 - yes the line needs editing. Shyamal (talk) 16:26, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Have updated the statements with the latest October 2022 paper results which is much clearer than old estimates. Let me know if you are interested in that paper. Shyamal (talk) 16:50, 19 October 2022 (UTC)

Siafu Ant

Need to add this one. It IS known to attack and eat PEOPLE. Seen it on a Documentary Channel recently. 216.247.72.142 (talk) 02:02, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Please provide Reliable sources. Shyamal (talk) 05:09, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Seen them on The Discovery Channel, eating a human corpse after they killed the guy. Also read the Siafu article as well. 216.247.72.142 (talk) 13:30, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

I do not see the Siafu entry talking about these ants killing humans and eating them. You mean Discovery Channel showed the ants chasing and killing a human? Shyamal (talk) 13:46, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

Note that you need to be able to cite scholarly sources that state the opposite of a scholarly statement like this Shyamal (talk) 13:54, 30 June 2023 (UTC)

"The legends of army ants killing and devouring humans and other large vertebrates, especially when they are immobilized and helpless, were largely inspired by some of the exaggerated reports of early explorer-naturalists." - Kronauer, Daniel J. C. (2020). Army Ants: Nature's Ultimate Social Hunters. Harvard University Press. p. 12.

Interestingly enough, it seems no African natives had such stories - "Whites were most repulsed by siafu or army ants. Siafu appeared, seemingly from nowhere, marching in a line a foot wide and yards long, consuming any living thing in their path. Europeans recounted gruesome scenes of animals and even human infants killed and bodies picked clean by marauding siafu." - Shadle, B. L. (2012-06-01). "Cruelty and Empathy, Animals and Race, in Colonial Kenya". Journal of Social History. 45 (4): 1097–1116. doi:10.1093/jsh/shr152. ISSN 0022-4529.

Types of Nests

Because ants have many different behaviors maybe we should mention how they can have super colonies, multi queen colonies, and even sometimes multi species colonies with certain species. TuesdayBruv1 (talk) 00:22, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Good suggestion, have added a new subsection "Nests, colonies, and supercolonies" - hope that covers some of it. We mention slave-making and myrmecophiles in other places. Shyamal (talk) 02:48, 24 August 2023 (UTC)

Thank you! I always found super colonies such as Solenopsis Invicta interesting and other super colony making species really really cool :) SillyAntLover (talk) 20:33, 28 September 2023 (UTC)

How it talk about the bug 170.177.227.111 (talk) 21:29, 31 January 2024 (UTC)

Ants can carry out life-saving amputations on injured nest mates, study shows

A recently published study shows per section title. The Guardian cites the journal Current Biology. This seems worthy of inclusion, but I'm not feeling bold right now. Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 15:34, 3 July 2024 (UTC)

Resolved

Thank you @Fred Gandt:! - have added a note in the section dealing with pathogens and protection. Shyamal (talk) 02:19, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

And thanks to you :) Fred Gandt · talk · contribs 11:59, 4 July 2024 (UTC)

References

Cladogram of subfamilies

Am I the only one who can’t see the cladogram on a mobile device? Only the namings of the subfamilies are visible. Xiphactinus88 (talk) 14:15, 8 July 2024 (UTC)

	Formicoid Myrmicinae Ectatomminae Heteroponerinae Formicinae Dolichoderinae Aneuretinae Pseudomyrmecinae Myrmeciinae Dorylinae‡ Poneroid Ponerinae Agroecomyrmecinae Paraponerinae Proceratiinae Amblyoponinae Apomyrminae Leptanillinae Martialinae

Might be the outer template code interfering. Here is the cladogram separated out. Shyamal (talk) 12:51, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

The problem is using the cladogram inside the taxobox. The taxobox uses class infobox and in mobile this interferes with CSS that draws the cladogram tree. The cladogram appears normally if this class is edited out with Inspect in the browser. As way of explanation, the cladograms are nested HTML tables with the some table cell borders shown to create the cladogram lines using CSS. The new mobile view has made a number of changes that forces CSS on page elements, which make the taxoboxes and cladograms appear worse. Here the combined effect makes the cladograms fail.

However, I think there are several problems with the placement of the cladogram in the infobox. Firstly, why place it in the infobox in the first place? It's duplicating the list of subfamilies. Second, why collapse important information. Best to move the cladogram out of the infobox and place in the relevant section for the internal phylogeny.  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:24, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Would support removing it outside - and sacrificing a few images to make space for it - and maybe removing the list of subfamilies and making them links on the cladogram. Shyamal (talk) 14:27, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

I've moved it outside the taxobox and put the two cladograms inline with the text. There isn't enough text to float both.  —  Jts1882 | talk  14:54, 10 August 2024 (UTC)

Looks good! Shyamal (talk) 15:53, 10 August 2024 (UTC)