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This test consists of 5 short answer questions, 10 short essay questions, and 1 (of 3) essay topics.

Short Answer Questions

1. What happens to the offspring of a queen when she is forced into a polygyny society?

2. What did scientist Santschi find that ants follow, during his experiment in 1911?

3. On what continent is there a species of ants that can explode their abdomens in a suicidal attempt to entrap their predators?

4. What species of ant carries large quantities of freshly cut vegetation into underground nests as deep as six meters?

5. Which of the following is NOT one of the ways biomass is measured?

Short Essay Questions

1. Why are male ants typically neglected in taxonomic studies?

2. How are ant colonies defined?

3. How is the workload divided between major and minor workers?

4. How do Idaho harvester ants exhibit altruistic behavior?

5. What realization did scientists make about the Myrmica ants ability to differentiate larvae from eggs?

6. How do ant colonies treat foreign ants that wander in the nest?

7. How do ant colonies succeed in securing true slavery?

8. Why are extra queens often considered an unnecessary burden within a colony?

9. What happens during the founding stage of an ant colony?

10. How has the rearing of isolated ant larvae affected scientists' understanding of reductionism?

Essay Topics

Write an essay for ONE of the following topics:

Essay Topic 1

The process of brooding young larvae is one of the most important processes in an ant colony. Explain the role the queen ant has in breeding her young. Explain the role worker ants have in the brooding. Finally, explain how chemical alteration of the larvae affects their brooding process.

Essay Topic 2

Ants are considered a highly altruistic species of animals. Define altruism. Give two examples of ways in which ants are considered altruistic creatures. Finally, explain how the altruism found within ant societies benefits the colony as a whole. Do you think ants would survive were it not for their altruistic nature?

Essay Topic 3

There are many ways that ants within a colony recognize one another and differentiate between friend and foe. Explain the most common ways ants recognize each other within a colony. Then explain to two main ways through which ants learn to recognize their colony. Finally, explain the controversy surrounding Jaffe and Sanchez's discovery of the gland that produces colony odor. How has this affected how scientists view kin recognition?

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This section contains 912 words (approx. 4 pages at 300 words per page) View a FREE sample