Harvard’s Ant Man

“E.O. Wilson is the ant man. Over six decades at Harvard University he has discovered more about ants than anyone else in history. He has thrown into relief for the general public just how important ants are—how they represent 25% or more of the insect biomass on the planet, how collectively they weigh more than all the humans in the world, how they assist humans by aerating the soil, suturing wounds, or, as in South Africa, harvesting the rooibos seeds for farm workers to collect. And how ancient they are: in 1966 Wilson and his colleagues identified an ant in a shard of amber that was 80m years old.”