Project wants to shoot in 3D all species of ants

Scientists at the California Academy of Sciences initiated a projectto make digital images of all the super-verbose and about 12thousand species of ants known to science

"They are amazing insects, " says lead researcher of the project,Brian Fisher. "Ants invented (the concept) and cultivation, longbefore humans."

Fisher created the project AntWeb (www.antweb.org), which already provides detailed images of more than 5,000 described species. The scientists now plan to travel the world with images,displaying them in museums.

The pictures were produced using a software called Auto-Montage3D, developed in Britain. He takes and combines different 3D images, each with a different plane of focus.

The catalog is available online, to serve as a source of informationfor researchers.

According to Fisher, there is still much to discover about the ants."We found only about 15% of the species on Earth, "said theexpert. "And people seem more interested in whether there is lifeon Mars than (identify) the other 85%. I think in part this is becausewe do not see the amazing hidden world (inhabited by ants)."