| To understand what is really going on in a colony of ants or bees, Dr. Dornhaus, an assistant professor of ecology and evolutionary biology at the University of Arizona, tracks the little creatures individually — hence the paint and the numbers. |
| studies of whether the efficiency of ant society, based on a division of labor among ant specialists, is important to their success |
| briefly anesthetized 1,200 ants, one by one, and painted them using a single wire-size brush, with model airplane paint |
| two video cameras aiming down on an insect-size stage, she analyzed 300 hours of videotape of the ants in action |
| behavior more worthy of Aesop’s grasshopper than the proverbial industrious ants |
| fast ants took one to five minutes to perform a task |
| slow ants took more than an hour, and sometimes two |
| about 50 percent of the other ants do not do any work at all |
| small colonies may sometimes rely on a single hyperactive overachiever |
|
Tala Ko 