awild | June 28, 2008I'm leaving shortly for the 2008 International Congress of Entomology in Durban, South Africa. This means another break from the blog for me, but when I return in mid-July there will be plenty of African insect photos. St. Lucia, where I'm headed the week before the conference, has African weaver ants, Polyrhachis, Tetraponera, and host of other photogenic critters. Apparently, they also have a problem with inappropriate mingling of wheelchairs and crocodiles (photo in St. Lucia by flickr user Chuha):
Fortunately, you won't be left all alone at Myrmecos blog. Jo-anne will be guest-…
awild | June 28, 2008
A close-in crop of the body:
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec exposure
awild | June 27, 2008
Yesterday's unexpectedly intense monsoon storms brought several inches of rain and flash floods to Tucson. Many of our desert ants cue their mating flights with the onset of the summer rains, and this morning the Forelius were flying, congregating in dense swarms that twirled and twisted above the desert floor.
Males emerge from the nest, ready to go:
photo details: (flight photos) Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/2.8, 1/800sec exposure
(close-ups) Canon MP-E 65mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec exposure, twin flash diffused through tracing…
awild | June 25, 2008Arizona has five seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Monsoon. Monsoon is my favorite.
By late June or early July, intense summer heat on the interior of the continent sets up a weather pattern pulling tropical moisture up from the south. After several weeks of baking at 106° with not a cloud in sight, the humidity spikes and we get afternoon storm clouds building over the mountains, the first rain in months, and a very welcome drop in daytime highs.
We entomologists love the monsoon; that's when the insects flourish. Ants hold their mating flights, jewel scarabs emerge, giant…
awild | June 23, 2008Via GTDA comes this mesmerizing time lapse video demonstrating the efficiency of ant recruitment:
awild | June 22, 2008A century ago, William Morton Wheeler inked this iconic illustration of the striking polymorphism displayed among members of an ant colony. You may have seen it; Andrew Bourke and Nigel Franks used it as the cover for their 1995 text Social Evolution in Ants.
I always assumed Wheeler's figure depicted some exotic tropical marauder ant, a voracious jungle species with massive soldiers for slicing up hapless prey. I don't read captions carefully enough, I guess, because I learned recently that this charismatic creature is actually a local harvester ant, Pheidole tepicana. Not only that, but…
awild | June 22, 2008We celebrated the repair of our computer by having a KitKat. A British Kitkat, that is. I never liked the cheap corn-syrupy flavor of the American version.  But the original british kitkat is a world apart- it's really quite good. The chocolate actually tastes like chocolate.
awild | June 15, 2008Yes, the computer is still in the shop. But there's still Gogol Bordello and what is quite possibly the world's best song:
awild | June 11, 2008The computer is still broken.  So here at Myrmecos Blog we're still on vacation. I should be back online within a week or two.
awild | June 5, 2008
Derobrachus hovorei - Palo Verde Borer
Cerambycidae
Tucson, Arizona
Every June, hundreds of thousands of giant beetles emerge from beneath the Tucsonian soil. The enormous size of these beetles- up to several inches long- makes them among the most memorable of Tucson's insects. They cruise about clumsily in the evenings, flying at eye level as they disperse and look for mates.
Palo Verde beetles spend most of their lives as subterranean grubs feeding on the roots of Palo Verde trees. Adults emerge in early summer, usually ahead of the monsoon, and by August they are gone.
It is still a…
awild | June 3, 2008My main blogging/photography machine has gone down and will be in the shop for a few weeks. I don't think I'll be buying another Gateway desktop- the current failure is not the first time.
In the meantime, you may amuse yourselves with the amazing Spider Dog:
awild | June 1, 2008
Taxonomists are busy, busy people. Their efforts in the year 2006 have just been released by Arizona State University's Institute for Species Exploration. Within insects, here's the breakdown by order:
The Institute has also compiled a whimsical "Top Ten" list of their favorite new species.
source: International Institute for Species Exploration. 2008. The Status of Observed Species Report 2008. online at http://species.asu.edu/pdf/sos.pdf
awild | May 31, 2008
30 years ago, biologists thought they'd solved one of Darwin's thorniest problems, the evolution of sterile social insects:
No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,âcases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have originated...I will not here enter on these several cases, but will confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. I allude to the neuters or sterile females in insect-communities: for these neuters often differ widely in…
awild | May 30, 2008
Cymatodera sp. Checkered Beetle (Cleridae)
Arizona
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/16, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | May 28, 2008
Odontomachus coquereli - Madagascar
Myrmecology continues to lead the way in online taxonomy. Today saw the release of the very first taxonomic paper published by the top-tier open access science journal, PLoS One.
Brian Fisher and Alex Smith combine alpha taxonomy with DNA barcoding to produce a revision of the Malagasy trap-jaw ants. The revision includes mitochondrial DNA sequences from some 500 individual ants and resulted in the inference of several new species. I've got plenty to say about DNA barcoding, but I'll leave that for a later post and instead point you to the thoughtful…
awild | May 27, 2008
As if we didn't already have enough pest ants to worry about, here is a relatively new one. The rover ant Brachymyrmex patagonicus, a tiny South American species, has been working its way under the radar across the southern United States. Its presence is now large enough that pest control companies are reporting a sudden increase in requests. According to gardeners I've talked to, these ants emerged in huge numbers here in Tucson about 5 years ago. Given the interest in this species, I thought I'd post a summary of what we know of this emerging pest and how to reliably identify it.…
awild | May 26, 2008
Centruroides sculpturatus - Arizona Bark Scorpion
I have a hard time getting worked up over stuff that happened 25 years ago. But here's something that still angers me every time I think of it.
One of those educational safety movies we were shown back in grade school- you know, the "Stop-Drop-and-Roll" variety- presented the dangers of the Bark Scorpion. The film featured dark tones and a dramatic reenactment of a deadly encounter, complete with screams and fainting.
This was shown in Rochester, New York, mind you. We don't have scorpions anywhere near Rochester. The climate is is far…