Magazine
March-April 2015
March-April 2015
Volume: 103 Number: 2
Nomadic army ants (Eciton burchelli), such as these individuals from a captive colony at the California Academy of Sciences, form living bridges with their bodies to cross gaps along their foraging trails. All ant trails are marked by species-specific pheromones, although their chemical composition remains unknown for most of the world’s 20,000 or more ant species. Many behaviors of social insects are likewise mediated by smell signals, including recognizing colony mates and the development of workers and their queen. In “How Animals Communicate Via Pheromones,” Tristram D. Wyatt summarizes the long history of pheromone research and discusses the animals that have most informed this field, including social insects, moths, and mice. There is one animal whose pheromones remain an intriguing question mark: Homo sapiens. Given recent advances in the field, though, Wyatt says the chemical identification of a human pheromone might be just around the corner. (Cover photo by Alexander Wild.)
In This Issue
- Art
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- Chemistry
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- Evolution
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- Sociology
- Technology
Carbon Nanotubes Deliver in Medicine
Khuloud T. Al-Jamal
Medicine
Attaching compounds to these hairlike devices turns them into powerful tools for imaging and targeted therapies.
The Origins of Lying and Deception in Everyday Life
Michael Lewis
Psychology
How do children make sense of the complex social code that dictates when they should or should not lie?
Phytoliths: The Storytelling Stones Inside Plants
Thomas C. Hart
Biology
These microscopic structures, which arise from silica present in plant tissues, are finding a wide variety of uses, from archaeology to forensics.
What Next for Particle Physics?
Jon Butterworth
Physics
The discovery of the Higgs boson at the Large Hadron Collider was a triumph for the Standard Model. Now the hunt is on for a deeper theory of reality.
