awild | March 30, 2010The New York Times on the changing face of the photography business:
Amateurs, happy to accept small checks for snapshots of children and sunsets, have increasing opportunities to make money on photos but are underpricing professional photographers and leaving them with limited career options. Professionals are also being hurt because magazines and newspapers are cutting pages or shutting altogether.
âThere are very few professional photographers who, right now, are not hurting,â said Holly Stuart Hughes, editor of the magazine Photo District News.
It's worth pointing out that what's…
awild | March 30, 2010
Who were those magical mystery insects?
The ant is Prenolepis imparis, recognizable by the attractive hourglass constriction in her mid-thorax. Congrats to Julie for the answer. The ant's hapless prey was, as Ted McRae proferred, a hackberry psyllid Pachypsylla celtidismamma (Hemiptera: Psyllidae).
The hard part was figuring out what the heck sort of group the oddball prey insect belonged to. Psyllids are related to aphids but haven't suffered such extreme modification over the course of their evolutionary descent. They retain all sorts of general buggy traits, rendering them difficult to…
awild | March 30, 2010Have Australians lost their fight against imported fire ants?
Despite $215Â million being poured into eradication programs nationally, fire ants have claimed territory in an arc from Logan City, between Brisbane and the Gold Coast, to near Grandchester, about 80km west of where the first outbreak was found at the Port of Brisbane in 2001.
Authorities now concede a new and even more expensive long-term campaign might be needed to stop them threatening our lifestyles.
I am curious as to how fire ants threaten the Aussie lifestyle, though. Do they eat Vegemite?
awild | March 29, 2010"Ah, an easy one!" you might think.
But no. I'm only handing out 4 points for identifying this common Illinois ant species. I'm more interested in this ant's quarry, for six points: 2 each for order, family, and genus. First correct guess in each category gets the points.
The cumulative point winner at the end of April gets an 8x10 print from the gallery, or a guest blog post on a topic of their choosing.
awild | March 29, 2010
While photographing a Lasius alienus colony in the park yesterday I noticed a red, round mite hanging off the leg of this worker ant. I'm glad we humans don't have parasites like these.
Perhaps if we're really nice, Macromite will tell us something about the little guy.
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f13, 1/250 sec, diffused flash heads positioned for backlighting and fill
awild | March 28, 2010I've moved some of my better termite photos to a new gallery at alexanderwild.com.
Go visit.
awild | March 27, 2010No, not really. I'm just kidding. Wouldn't it be great to have an ant field guide, though?
Off and on for the past couple years I've been playing with concepts. A potential format is this (click to download pdf):
The salient features, in my opinion:
Targeted at the general naturalist, so less technical than the excellent Fisher & Cover guide
Organized around genera, as species IDs remain problematic without microscopes
With synopses of the most commonly encountered species
Containing brief chapters on ant ecology, collection, culture, etc
But that's what I'd like in an ant book. The…
awild | March 26, 2010
Tenebrio molitor, pupa
Tenebrio molitor is a darkling beetle known more for its immature stages than for its adults. It is the ubiquitous mealworm. You can buy these granivorous beetles at any pet store as food for fish, birds, and reptiles.
The above shot of a developing pupa requires two sources of light. A flash head positioned behind the insect backlights the subject to produce the translucent glow. A second, positioned above and in front, is powered down and provides the highlights and details of the head and appendages.
Tenebrio molitor larva and pupa
Stronger backlighting gives this…
awild | March 25, 2010
Blatta orientalis
Oriental Cockroach
The key to this image is the soft lighting. A strobe fired into a white box produces an even white light, allowing us to see the subtler tones and textures on the surface of this common pest insect. You could almost sell this roach on ebay.
Photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 200, f10, 1/160 sec
awild | March 24, 2010What was that dashing bug in pastel colors? As so many of you picked, it's a palmetto planthopper.
Order: Hemiptera
Family: Flatidae
Genus: Ormenaria
Species: rufifascia
Points are awarded as follows:
James Trager: 8 points
Chris Grinter: 5 points
And, one point each for TGIQ, Pete Yeeles, and Ted MacRae for providing additional information including suborder and species year & author.
awild | March 23, 2010What am I doing this summer?
Good question. I'm teaching Integrative Biology 496: Introduction to Beekeeping.
If you are a University of Illinois student and would like to learn about the biology of Apis mellifera and how to manage a small apiary for honey or just for fun, please consider this 8-week class. Enrollment is capped at 22 in order to maintain a reasonable student to hive ratio.
The class website is here.
awild | March 22, 2010Tonight's mystery is a straight-up Name That Bug:
From central Florida, the mystery insect
One point for picking the order, two points for family, five points for genus, and five points for species. [added in edit- you've got to be first in any one category].
And guess what? We've finally decided what to do with all these hard-earned Myrmecos Points!
At the end of every month, I'll tally points from the preceding weeks and the winner will get to choose either:
Any 8x10 print from the galleries of www.alexanderwild.com
-or, since so many of you are bloggers-
A freebie blog entry where the…
awild | March 22, 2010The Nature Blog Network is the web's largest congregation of natural history enthusiasts and one of the finest places to find new bloggy reading. This week NBN interviews me as part of their Featured Blog series:
Whatâs the best thing about blogging?
Blogging is instantaneous. I can respond to new scientific papers as I read them, for example. This might not sound like much, but you have to understand the traditional scientific publishing model. In the old system if I wanted to react to a paper, Iâd submit a letter or a review to the journal, itâd go through peer-review, and 8 months…
awild | March 21, 2010
I had an assignment this weekend to shoot preserved insects as if in a museum display collection. Dead bugs aren't normally my thing, but there's something to be said about subjects that stay put and allow me to arrange lighting without scurrying off. I pinned the insects in foam-bottomed trays and reflected the strobe off an overhead white board. More photos below.
Photo details (all): Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f5-f11, 1/40 sec, indirect strobe
awild | March 19, 2010This week was warm enough to go insect hunting in the yard, so the Friday beetle is back with new material. I snapped a few shots of this little staphylinid under a brick, figuring I'd identify it later.
That turned out to be a more complicated process than I'd anticipated.
It's a member of the the subfamily Aleocharinae, the obscure rove beetles. To arrive at an identification any more specific than that is basically impossible. The late James Ashe wrote:
The seemingly endless diversity, the small size of most adults, and the virtual lack of illustrated keys and descriptions of…
awild | March 18, 2010
Harmonia axyridis, the Asian Multicolored Lady Beetle
If I had to pick the most annoying insect in Illinois it'd be Harmonia axyridis. This lady beetle was introduced to our continent as a control agent for aphids but became a pest in its own right. It consumes not just aphids but all manner of other insects, including beneficials like native lady beetles. Swarms of them descend into our houses in the fall. They get just about everywhere. They have a noxious odor. And they bite.
A study out in PLoS One byLombaert et al has determined that our local beetles here in eastern North America are…
awild | March 17, 2010Not a fire ant.
But I'll give ten Myrmecos (â¢) points to the first person who can identify what species it really is.
awild | March 16, 2010Podomyrma sp.
Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, f13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper