Termites and ants contribute more to animal biomass in tropical rain forests than any other single group and perform vital ecosystem functions. Although ants prey on termites, at the community level the linkage between these groups is poorly understood. Thus, assessing the distribution and specificity of ant termitophagy is of considerable interest. We describe an approach for quantifying ant-t...

1. The present review focuses on the adenine nucleotide translocator (ANT), which facilitates exchange of cytosolic ADP for mitochondrial ATP. This protein serves a central role in regulating cellular oxidative capacity. 2. The ANT, a nuclear-encoded mitochondrial protein, is developmentally regulated and, thus, accumulates within the mitochondrial membrane during maturation. 3. Accumulation of...

The basic ant colony algorithm for mobile robot path planning has many problems, such as lack of stability,algorithm premature convergence, more difficult to find optimal solution for complex problems and so on. This paper proposes four improvement measures. 1. Apply genetic algorithm to optimization and configuration parameters of the basic ant colony algorithm; 2. Apply max min ant method to ...

It is well documented that ants can protect plants against insect herbivores, but the underlying mechanisms remain almost undocumented. We propose and test the pheromone avoidance hypothesis--an indirect mechanism where insect herbivores are repelled not only by ants but also by ant pheromones. Herbivores subjected to ant predation will experience a selective advantage if they evolve mechanisms...

The foundation of many plant-ant mutualisms is ant protection of plants from herbivores in exchange for food and/or shelter. While the role of symbiotic ants in protecting plants from stem- and leaf-feeding herbivores has been intensively studied, the relationship between ant defense and measures of plant fitness has seldom been quantified. We studied ant aggression, damage by herbivores and se...

OBJECTIVE To study the involvement of the anterior nuclei of the thalamus (ANT) as compared to the involvement of the hippocampus in the processes of encoding and recognition during visual and verbal memory tasks. METHODS We studied intracerebral recordings in patients with pharmacoresistent epilepsy who underwent deep brain stimulation (DBS) of the ANT with depth electrodes implanted bilater...

Three ant species nest obligately in the swollen-thorn domatia of the African ant-plant Vachellia (Acacia) drepanolobium, a model system for the study of ant-defence mutualisms and species coexistence. Here we report on the characteristic fungal communities generated by these ant species in their domatia. First, we describe behavioural differences between the ant species when presented with a c...

water conveyance systems (wcss) are costly infrastructures in terms of materials, construction, maintenance and energy requirements. much attention has been given to the application of optimization methods to minimize the costs associated with such infrastructures. historically, traditional optimization techniques have been used, such as linear and non-linear programming. in this paper, applica...

This paper proposes an algorithm for data mining called Ant-Miner (ant-colony-based data miner). The goal of AntMiner is to extract classification rules from data. The algorithm is inspired by both research on the behavior of real ant colonies and some data mining concepts as well as principles. We compare the performance of Ant-Miner with CN2, a well-known data mining algorithm for classificat...

Background: This study aimed to investigate the occurrence of aminoglycoside resistance and the prevalence of the resistance-modifying enzyme genes, ant(3”)-III, ant(6’)-Ia, aac(6′)-Ie-aph(2”)-Ia, and aph(2’)-Id, in Enterococcus strains isolated in Kermanshah Province, west of Iran.Methods: In this cross-sectional study, 108 enterococcal isolates from urine, wound, blood, and cerebrospinal flui...