Alex Wild
awild
Posts by this author
June 8, 2010
What was the strange insect that seemed a mutant cross between a bee and a beetle?
Rhipiphorus wedge-shaped beetle, ovipositing into an aster Shawnee National Forest, Illinois
Kudos and all 10 points go to coleopterist extraordinaire Ted MacRae of Beetles in the Bush, who provided the correct…
June 8, 2010
Audubon's Ted Williams explains that staged images have taken over the animal photography business and argues that these ubiquitous phonies give the public an inaccurate view of nature:
Audubon has sent me to lots of wild places over the past 31 years, but I'd seen only one wolf and three cougars…
June 7, 2010
Tonight's challenge is this rather unusual insect.
What is it?
Points will be awarded to the first person to pick the order (3), family (3), and genus (3). Plus, a bonus point for explaining what is unusual about this insect's life cycle.
The cumulative winner for the month of June 2010 will get…
June 6, 2010
From the clever UK children's series Smalltalk Diaries:
June 4, 2010
Oberea flavipes, phlox stem borer beetlesIllinois
Here's a boring beetle.
That is, the larvae bore. They make their living carving tunnels through stems and consuming plant tissue. This pair was hanging out in the phlox in our back yard, apparently plotting the demise of our summer flower garden…
June 2, 2010
The bold, playful style of Graphocephala coccinea, the candy-striped leafhopper, is all the rage this season:
photo details:
Canon EOS 7D camera
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec
diffused twin flash
June 1, 2010
Speed was essential to scoring points in yesterday's istockphoto taxonomy fail challenge. Commentator JasonC replied within minutes of the original posting with 8 answers correct to the appropriate level and is awarded 8 points. RobM and MarekB also picked up a point each for adding identifications…
June 1, 2010
With plumes of crude oil destroying the Gulf of Mexico, tensions rising in the middle east, a severe hurricane season reving up in the Atlantic, and the earth opening up and just plain swallowing parts of Guatemala City whole, what else could possibly go wrong?
A mormon cricket crosses the road,…
May 31, 2010
Mystery #1
I admit, I like to pick on iStockphoto, the pioneering company behind the high volume/low cost microstock model of media licensing.
There's nothing wrong with microstock. After all, the thriving web-based market for cheap images is a ripe opportunity. But buyers get what they pay for…
May 30, 2010
Playwright Tom Stoppard retells Shakespeare's Hamlet as an absurd comedy from the perspective of two minor characters. The brilliant Gary Oldman and Tim Roth star in Stoppard's own film adaptation (1990). Here's an excerpt:
May 29, 2010
Aphaenogaster woodland ants disperse a bloodroot seed. This image materialized in my head a couple months before I actually set it up.
My photographs fall into two categories: incidental shots I happen upon by chance, and premeditated images mapped out in advance. There's not much to say about…
May 27, 2010
Time for a little rant. I've been assembling the syllabus for a summer beekeeping course here at the University of Illinois- the first time we've offered beekeeping as a regular class in over 30 years- and I've run into an annoying snag: the lack of a suitable textbook.
There's no shortage of books…
May 26, 2010
Anochetus paripungens trap-jaw ant carrying a cocoon, Australia
photo details:
Canon EOS 50D camera
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec
twin flash heads placed in front and behind the subject.
May 25, 2010
You folks are quick. Not two minutes after I posted yesterday's mystery bug, commentator FormicidaeFantasy provided the correct answer: it is the forelimb of a praying mantis. Specifically, a nymph of the Carolina mantis Stagmomantis carolina.
So, eight highly valuable Myrmecos Points go to…
May 25, 2010
You've seen the ISO button on your camera. What does it do, and why does it matter?
ISO- an abbreviation for International Organization for Standardization- refers to a standard measure of the sensitivity of film or digital sensors to incoming light. The higher the ISO rating, the more sensitive…
May 24, 2010
This looks like it could be painful. What is it?
Five points to the first person to name the organism, and five for the structure.
The cumulative points winner for the month of May will win either 1) any 8x10 print from my insect photo gallery, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work) topic…
May 23, 2010
A clip from the documentary "Ants: Nature's Secret Power":
May 23, 2010
The Boneyard Bombshells (red) take on The 'Paign (blue) in Champaign-Urbana's first ever roller derby bout
How many rocket scientists does it take to set up a roller derby bout?
Apparently, the answer is two. That's how many were on hand Friday night to help lay the track for Champaign-Urbana…
May 21, 2010
Asphinctopone pilosa Hawkes 2010
The discovery of new insect species continues apace. Today, the online journal Zootaxa presents this pretty little ponerine from Tanzania, described by Peter Hawkes.
Asphinctopone is a rather poorly-known genus previously collected only in the tropical forests of…
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,…
May 18, 2010
This shot was taken in the natural ambience of our living room with the soft light of a rainy dusk filtering through the windows. I coaxed Mingus the Cat to the top of the bookshelf with some treats and waited for him to check out the boquet.
Owing to the lack of light I used a fast lens (Canon's…
May 18, 2010
Who was that dashing ant of mystery and intrigue?
Tetramorium simillimum is a small myrmicine that has tramped around the globe with human commerce, quietly inserting itself into native ecosystems. Like most insect species, little is known about its behavior or its interactions with other species…
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 May…
May 16, 2010
The trailer for the 1977 film "Empire of the Ants":
May 15, 2010
Natural disasters are things we see in the news. A flood in Bangladesh, earthquakes in China, wildfires in California- all reported in somber tones before the commercial break, often presented with some generic disaster clip of people sorting through rubble. These events have a defining feature:…
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…
May 14, 2010
Heterospilus, undescribed species, Costa Rica
My more astute readers may have noticed that Myrmecos Blog has been uncharacteristically quiet this week. I do apologize, but I have a regular research job aside from blogging that periodically requires attention.
I've been assembling genetic and…
May 11, 2010
What was the mystery?
It's a unique-headed bug in the enigmatic family Enicocephalidae. These soil-dwelling insects are predators of other arthropods. They are of phylogenetic interest as a potential sister lineage to the remaining Heteroptera, the true bugs.
Enicocephalids aren't terribly common…