By: Charles Q. Choi from Scientific American "Humans often make irrational choices when faced with challenging decisions. Ant colonies, however, can make perfectly rational selections when confronted by tough dilemmas. This isn't because lone ants are especially knowledgeable—they're not...

Insect colonies offer insight into the mysterious conversations of neurons, illuminating how billions of individual brain cells work in concert to make a single decision... by Elizabeth Lindhardt in Seed Magazine. Read the article.

Miriam Brandt, Ellen van Wilgenburg, Robert Sulc, Kenneth J Shea and Neil D Tsutsui (wisdom grantee) Background Ants form highly social and cooperative colonies that compete, and often fight, against other such colonies, both intra- and interspecifically. Some invasive ants take sociality to an extreme...