Ant Stories By Andrey Pavlov

Myrmecologists study ants in the laboratory and in their natural conditions. Their complex and variable social structures have made ants ideal model organisms. Ultraviolet vision was first discovered in ants by Sir John Lubbok in 1881. Studies on ants have tested hypotheses in ecology, sociobiology and have been particularly important in examining the predictions of theories of kin selection and evolutionarily stable strategies. Ant colonies can be studied by rearing or temporarily maintaining them in formicaria, specially constructed glass framed enclosures. Individuals may be tracked for study by marking them with colours.
The successful techniques used by ant colonies have been studied in computer science and robotics to produce distributed and fault-tolerant systems for solving problems. This area of biomimetics has led to studies of ant locomotion, search engines that make use of "foraging trails", fault-tolerant storage and networking algorithms.