The Desert Ants in the Salt Pans of Tunisia

Marcus Kanadin is at the Max Planck Institute for Chemical Ecology in Jena, Germany. He and his colleague Marilia Freira do field work in the salt pans of Tunisia. The farther their burrows were into that flat featureless plain away from plants and rocks they tended to build these big mounds at the entrances of their nests. They're like volcano-like humps sometimes more than 10 inches tall.