Cataglyphis

[3] Cataglyphis is also the name of an autonomous rover[4] that won the NASA Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge[5] inspired by the navigation approaches used by desert ants.

[7] In the Sahara, ants live where no bushes or clumps of grass are available to protect them, and where tracks are covered by wind-blown sand in seconds.

The midday sun is so hot that even the permanent residents, sand lizards, insects, and a few birds, have to take shelter, but this is when, for not much more than an hour, Cataglyphis spp.

This behavior may serve as a defensive gesture in Crematogaster (acrobat) ants, but in Cataglyphis this is thought to improve mobility in desert habitats.

[14][15] Parthenogenesis, in this case, involves, a process (automictic thelytoky) by which two haploid products of meiosis fuse to form a diploid zygote that develops into a gyne.