The following outline is provided as an overview of and topical guide to ants:
Ants – social insects with geniculate (elbowed) antennae and a distinctive node-like structure that forms a slender waist. Ants are of the family Formicidae and evolved from wasp-like ancestors in the mid-Cretaceous period between 110 and 130 million years ago, diversifying after the rise of flowering plants. More than 12,500 out of an estimated total of 22,000 species have been classified.
Essence of ants
[edit]- Ant colony
- Myrmecology – scientific study of ants
Biological classification
[edit]- Kingdom: Animalia
- Phylum: Arthropoda
- Class: Insecta
- Order: Hymenoptera
- Class: Insecta
- Phylum: Arthropoda
Kinds of ants
[edit]Subfamilies
[edit]- Extant subfamilies
- Agroecomyrmecinae
- Amblyoponinae
- Aneuretinae
- Dolichoderinae
- Dorylinae
- Ectatomminae
- Formicinae
- Heteroponerinae
- Leptanillinae
- Martialinae
- Myrmeciinae
- Myrmicinae
- Paraponerinae
- Ponerinae
- Proceratiinae
- Pseudomyrmecinae
- Fossil subfamilies
- †Armaniinae (sometimes treated as the family Armaniidae within the superfamily Formicoidea)
- †Brownimeciinae
- †Formiciinae
- †Sphecomyrminae
General myrmecology concepts
[edit]Myrmecologists
[edit]- Murray S. Blum (1929–2015)
- Barry Bolton
- Horace Donisthorpe (1870–1951)
- Auguste Forel (1848–1931)
- William Gould (1715–1799)
- Bert Hölldobler (born 1936)
- Thomas C. Jerdon (1811–1872)
- Sir John Lubbock (1st Lord and Baron Avebury) (1834–1913)
- Derek Wragge Morley (1920–1969)
- Frederick Smith (1805–1879)
- John Obadiah Westwood (1805–1893)
- William Morton Wheeler (1865–1937)
- E.O. Wilson (1929–2021)