UNVEILING THE LIVES OF ANTS: A CALL TO OBSERVE THEIR FASCINATING NATURAL WORLD

Natural History (NH) involves observing and describing the biological characteristics of organisms within their environments. However, despite its central role in supporting the development of modern ecology, evolutionary biology, and conservation, NH is often mistakenly regarded as unscientific. Additionally, the decline of NH in training, scientific journals, open calls, grant proposals, and textbooks is partly related to the rise of disciplines, such as molecular biology and theoretical ecology, both of which have higher acceptance rate in more impactful journals. This chapter provides an overview of the NH knowledge related to ants in Brazil. Only ~11% of the Brazilian species have published NH data. Furthermore, NH papers represent 25% of those focused on ant diversity, and ~34% of the NH papers and less than 6% of abstracts from the Simpósio Internacional de Mirmecologia include the term ‘Natural History’. Secondly, acknowledging the undeniable importance of NH as both a starting point and an ultimate reference in any myrmecological research, we present descriptive and integrative compelling NH studies across Brazilian biomes. These approaches have value in stimulating our curiosity, inspiring new questions, addressing taxonomic problems, and advancing theory. We conclude with recommendations for both well-established and new scientists in myrmecology to support and integrate NH into their projects, emphasizing the long-term value of NH data for scientific progress.