BioMan

Interesting ideas - have you come across the Mars Trilogy by Kim Stanley Robinson? He explores a very similar thing in those books. The ideas in them are fascinating, and the writing's quite good...

What - study theology, and travel half way round the world by boat? Haha, only kidding- I'm not denying he was a great scientist, and you can learn a lot from reading his work - maybe I should have said it is more efficient to read current stuff...

I'm afraid I'm not that much of authority on ants - there are about 9000 spp! However, I assume you are American, so the key at http://www.ipm.ucdavis.edu/TOOLS/ANTKEY/index.htmlan might be useful. Simply plug in the traits of your ant and see what you come up with. I also found this, which may be a little discouraging: The Department of Agriculture prohibits interstate shipment of queen ants. They don't want reproducing ants going into other states where they may start colonies that could damage agriculture or the ecosystem. Another reason we don't send queens is because they are very difficult to find. Harvester ants tunnel up to 15 feet straight down when building their colony and may have many thousands of ants per colony. Finding the queen is like finding a needle in a hay stack. However, I found the Queen ant quite easily since I had a patio. The ants had tunnelled a 2 dimensional nest beneath the paving stones, and were therefore very easy to find. If you have a colony in your garden, I would suggest digging the whole thing up and sifting through it. - Anyway, goodluck with it.

Quick one b4 bed: My vote's for extended life is possible. I read an article taling about research on C. habditis, the worm, and they managed to make that live for longer by tweaking genes, as has already been mentioned about the telomeres. Another interesting thing is that sex reduces the lifespan in some species, eg Drosophila, in fact, scientists have bred a male that has sperm so toxic it will instantly kill the female. I believe age is all in the genes because of the evolutionary advantage of dying - but I'll come back to that tomorrow...

It's essential reading for the 'history of science', but it's far easier and more useful to read more current texts to get an understanding of evolution.

Do you know what species you're dealing with? I've done a similar thing with the common British ant, and the Queen was very easy to find. I know a good species to work with is Leptothorax, cos it's small and lives in flat nests - a good study insect. Who gets to mate with the Queen depends on the species - but essentially what you need is her, and some worker to provide the sperm, or get larvae if you can... edit to add: to find the Queen - simply follow the workers, when you see them, they are foraging for food to take back to the nest. She stays put in the centre for most of the time, and larvae will be found in her vicinity. Usually the queen is predetermined from birth, so no, you can't start a colony with just a worker ant. They are all haploid (half the genes) and sterile. It's better to think of the colony as the organism and the ants as specialised cells. eg The workers are the differentiated cells, like skin, organs etc The Queen is analogous to the somatic cells and so reproduction occurs via her and select males only. All depends on species too.