Talk:Ant

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)

Semi-protected edit request on 4 November 2024

Some ants form a mutulistic relationship with crop pests such as aphids by protecting them in exchange for honeydew, a sugary substance that aphids secrete.Wills, B. D., & Landis, D. A. (2018). The role of ants in north temperate grasslands: a review. Oecologia, 186(2), 323-338. DOI:https://doi.org/10.1007/s00442-017-4007-0 Graceyarah (talk) 14:23, 4 November 2024 (UTC)

@Graceyarah: Already in the article - see the second paragraph under the section "Relationships with other organisms". Note that the relationship exists with many sucking insects which feed on a variety of host plants, thus not necessarily "crop pests". Shyamal (talk) 15:28, 4 November 2024 (UTC)