Across the Afrotropical and Malagasy regions, ants are one of the most conspicuous and ecologically dominant animal groups. From driver ants to weaver ants, there are over 2,000 species in Africa alone and over 600 in Madagascar. Ants of Africa and Madagascar introduces readers to the fascinating and diverse ant fauna of the Afrotropical and Malagasy regions. Featuring illustrated keys to subfamilies, separate keys to Afrotropical and Malagasy ant genera, and distribution maps, it also describes diagnostic characters, explores ant ecology and natural history, and includes a list of all currently recognized ant species in the regions. This detailed guide is an essential tool for entomologists and myrmecologists working with and learning about this diverse population of Formicidae.

Barry Bolton's "New General Catalogue of the Ants of the World," published in 1995, was the first attempt in more than one hundred years to collect all taxonomic decisions for ants worldwide, including extinct as well as extant taxa. One reviewer said of it, "There is no longer an excuse for nomenclatural mistakes, since all past decisions are recorded here. All future revisions will use this reference as a point of departure." Now Gary Alpert, Philip Ward, and Piotr Naskrecki have joined Bolton to produce a completely updated and even more comprehensive edition of Bolton's monumental work.

The new edition incorporates all taxonomic papers--from 1758 through 2005--on 14,550 species and subspecies of ants. The CD allows every valid species name to be linked to the primary taxonomic citation and to all subsequent taxonomic literature that is relevant. As was true of the earlier edition, both fossil and living ants are covered from the species level up through the subgenus, genus, tribe, and subfamily rank. Each species description also records the caste--worker, queen, male, soldier, or minor worker--which was described, along with the page number and any illustrations. Ant larvae descriptions and chromosome papers can be searched within the data set. The ant's type locality on a country-by-country basis can also be queried from this catalogue.

From subarctic tundra to equatorial rainforest, deep in the soil and at the tip of the highest tree, ants are found the world over. This book, by the world's leading ant taxonomist, offers a definitive guide for identifying these ubiquitous insects.

Barry Bolton provides identification keys to all the living ant subfamilies and genera, presented in alphabetical order and separated by zoogeographical region. Designed for professional and amateur myrmecologists alike, this guide is as accessible as it is comprehensive, including information on the function and use of identification keys, instructions for preparing specimens for examination, and an illustrated glossary of morphological terms. Over 500 scanning electron microscope photographs illustrate the taxonomic keys.

Bolton introduces each subfamily with a diagnosis of the group, followed by synoptic classifications of all genera within each subfamily, notes on broad distribution, and a list of references to all species-rank publications useful to identification. He also provides a short summary of the extinct subfamilies and includes a checklist of every name ever proposed in the classification of ants, from the rank of family down to subgenus, showing the current status and usage of each.

An updated and exhaustively expanded revision of the taxonomic keys found in Hö lldobler and Wilson's "The Ants," Bolton's identification guide takes its place alongside that landmark work as the foundation for the study of ants for many years to come.

"A name is forever, or at least as long as taxonomy continues," Barry Bolton writes, and here are all the names, antique and modern, of all the ants that are or ever were--from the arctic to the tropical, the fossilized to the living, the mislabeled to the newly christened members of the family Formicidae. For every name that has ever been applied to ants, the book supplies a history and an account of current usage, together with a fully documented indication of the present-day classification. Its comprehensive bibliography provides references to original description, synonymy, homonymy, changes in rank, status, and availability, and alterations in generic status.

Organized by family group, genus group, and species group, this meticulously detailed but easily used volume is the ultimate resource for myrmecology. Along with Bolton's "Identification Guide to the Ant Genera of the World, it will be the essential reference for anyone, expert or amateur, with an interest in ants.