The series of biannual international conferences “ANTS – International C- ference on Ant Colony Optimization and Swarm Intelligence”, now in its sixth edition, was started ten years ago, with the organization of ANTS’98. As some readers might recall, the first edition of ANTS was titled “ANTS’98 – From Ant Colonies to Artificial Ants: First International Workshop on Ant Colony Op- mization. ” In fact, at that time the focus was mainly on ant colony optimization (ACO), the first swarm intelligence algorithm to go beyond a pure scientific interest and to enter the realm of real-world applications. Interestingly, in the ten years after the first edition there has been a gr- ing interest not only for ACO, but for a number of other studies that belong more generally to the area of swarmintelligence. The rapid growth of the swarm intelligence field is attested by a number of indicators. First, the number of s- missions and participants to the ANTS conferences has steadily increased over the years. Second, a number of international conferences in computational - telligence and related disciplines organize workshops on subjects such as swarm intelligence, ant algorithms, ant colony optimization, and particle swarm op- mization. Third, IEEE startedorganizing,in 2003,the IEEE SwarmIntelligence Symposium (in order to maintain unity in this growing field, we are currently establishing a cooperation agreement between IEEE SISandANTSsoastohave 1 IEEE SIS in odd years and ANTS in even years). Last, the Swarm Intelligence journal was born.