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Workers and soldiers: sizing up diversity in ant species

An evolutionary developmental biologist is intrigued by how wing buds affect the growth of these insects’ heads and bodies.
  1. James Mitchell Crow

    1. James Mitchell Crow is a freelance writer in Melbourne, Australia.

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Ehab Abouheif studies an ant in his lab at McGill University

Ehab Abouheif is an evolutionary developmental biologist at McGill University in Montreal, Canada. Credit: Owen Egan for Nature

The ant on my screen here belongs to the species Pheidole absurda, so named because their heads are so absurdly large relative to their bodies. These ants have been central to some of my team’s major discoveries.

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Nature 585, 626 (2020)

doi: https://doi.org/10.1038/d41586-020-02683-w

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