Ph.D. - City University Of New York: 1968
Professor Of Psychology - Hunter College of CUNY: 1970-Present
Research Associate, The American Museum Of Natural History
Research Interests: The evolution of social behavior in insects.
Field Research Conducted In: Panama, Costa Rica, Kenya, Arizona

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There are about 8,000 species of ants in the world, and all exhibit a complex form of social organization. Army ants are the "Huns and Tartars" of the insect world. With colonies containing up to 10 million workers, these predators raid, dismember, and consume vast numbers of bees, wasps, termites, and other ant species. Slave-making ants of the genus Polyergus have taken a different evolutionary route. They are social parasites. The workers cannot gather food, feed their queen or brood, clean their nest, or even defend the colony from predators. Instead, Polyergus workers conduct group raids on other ant species. They snatch the brood, take it back to their own nest, and rear the stolen ants to adulthood. When they mature, these "slave"ants do all the work for Polyergus. The field research we conduct is designed to elucidate the mechanisms of communication that underly ant social organization, and the evolutionary paths that have led to these fascinting behaviors.