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Published online 9 July 2002 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news020708-1
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Patterns shape ant cemeteries
Fifty-year-old theory explains how ants gather their dead.
Ants arrange their dead using the same principles that are thought to produce the markings on animal skin and on tropical sea shells.
This is the first clear example of so-called Turing patterns in communities of higher organisms, say researchers Guy Theraulaz of the Universite Paul Sabatier in Toulouse, France, and co-workers1.
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