Ants
Myrmecos
Category archives for Ants
Some Turtle Ant Mimics
Posted by Alex Wild on May 20, 2010 Biologist Henry Hespenheide sends along this shot of several ant-mimicking beetles and their Cephalotes model: What I take from this image is just how important the appearance of a narrow waist must be to successfully pulling off the illusion. These mimics differ considerably in body proportions, but they have all managed to paint a fake…
Monday Night Mystery
Posted by Alex Wild on May 17, 2010 We haven’t done an ant mystery for ages. So here you go: Although I photographed this little ant in Florida, it could just as easily have been in a number of tropical places. Five points each for the first person to pick the genus and the species. The cumulative points winner for the month of…
Sunday Night Movie: Empire of the Ants
Posted by Alex Wild on May 16, 2010 The trailer for the 1977 film “Empire of the Ants“:
What does an ant genome look like?
Posted by Alex Wild on May 14, 2010 Bits and pieces of an ongoing project to sequence the genome of the leafcutter ant Atta cephalotes have started going up on Genbank- Have a look! Of course, these are just raw strings of nucleotides that haven’t yet been annotated or analyzed in any meaningful way. The real science won’t begin until researchers begin testing…
A trap-jaw ant…
Posted by Alex Wild on May 10, 2010 …because badass mandibles are in style this season: Odontomachus turneri, Australia photo details: Canon EOS 50D camera Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec
Strobe Ants
Posted by Alex Wild on May 6, 2010 New this week at alexanderwild.com we have photographs of the Savanna Strobe Ant Opisthopsis haddoni. These delightfully perky insects inhabit open environments in northern Australia and are one of my favorite ants. Opisthopsis has excellent vision. The location of the compound eyes atop the head allows it to spot a photographer approaching from any direction…
An amazing photo posted this week at Antweb shows a developing male Cerapachys ant inside the silken cocoon: (Image by Erin Prado)
Sunday Night Movie: Ants Get Political
Posted by Alex Wild on May 2, 2010 How did they catch this footage of an ANTi-pesticide protest? Here’s a peek behind the scenes.
What to do when ants invade the kitchen?
Posted by Alex Wild on May 2, 2010 Take a photograph, of course: Tapinoma sessile, the odorous house ant photo details: Canon EOS 50D camera Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec
Cephalotes varians, up close
Posted by Alex Wild on April 29, 2010 Blog posts are long, thin things. One could, for example, use a blog to post a high-resolution map of Chile. Or a single strand of spagetti. Any image up to 500 pixels wide, for as long as it goes. In that vein, here’s a Cephalotes varians turtle ant: Just wait until I find a stick…