What is the scientific study of ants?



Myrmecology is the scientific study of ants and is a branch of entomology (the study of insects). There are more than 12,500 described species in the ant family that have been classified out of an estimated total of 22,000.  Ants are found everywhere in the world including areas that are temperate and tropical.  Most of the described and unknown species are located in the rainforests, however, due to the destruction of those forests, most of them will probably never be categorized.  The only land mass lacking ants are Antartica and a possibly a few remote or inhospitable islands.



Ants often are studied by engineers for biomimicry and by network engineers for more efficient networking. It is not known clearly how ants manage to avoid congestions and how they optimize their movements to move in most efficient ways without a central authority that would send out orders. There already have been many applications in structure design and networking that have been developed from studying ants, but the efficiency of human-created systems is still not close to the efficiency of ant colonies. Furthermore, there are efforts to use ant algorithms and the behavioral strategies of ants in modern management.



 



Picture Credit : Google


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