Alex Wild
awild
Posts by this author
October 11, 2009
10 points to the first person who can identify this:
Another 10 to the first person who can explain its myrmecological significance.
October 9, 2009
I admit to a soft spot for beetles in the family Nitidulidae. Maybe it's the cute clubby antennae. Or maybe it's just the shared fondness for beer. In any case, the sap beetles are charming little insects.
I found this Amphicrossus imbibing fermented tree sap from a wounded tree in downtown…
October 8, 2009
they've got nothing on Protanilla.
(via antweb)
October 8, 2009
Smugmug, the host for my image gallery alexanderwild.com, has been down all morning. The problem is apparently serious and resolution may take a while.
I apologize for the inconvenience. If there was a particular image you were looking for this morning and now you can't get to it, email me.
*…
October 7, 2009
One of the oddest results from the Ant Tree of Life phylogeny was the recovery of a close relationship between Monomorium and Myrmicaria, two rather different looking ants.
But it all seems a little more plausible when looking at the Monomorium infuscum specimen recently uploaded to antweb. I…
October 2, 2009
Chlaenius sp. ground beetle, Urbana, Illinois
This colorful beetle came from our back yard. It's a ground beetle in the genus Chlaenius, recognizeable from its pubescent elytra and pungent defensive secretions. Like most ground beetles, Chlaenius makes a living as a predator.
The beetle's…
October 1, 2009
This tiger moth caterpillar may appear normal at first glance. But a closer look reveals it to be plagued by dozens of wasp larvae, slowly consuming it alive as they cling to its back:
photo details (top photo): Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 200, f/7, 1/200 sec, indirect…
September 30, 2009
Tandem running in Camponotus consobrinus - photo by Steve Shattuck
I discovered while googling about this morning that Australian ant guru Steve Shattuck has been uploading some very nice photos to flickr. Â With any luck we'll be seeing some of these in a new incarnation of the Australian Ants…
September 30, 2009
The North Carolina Entomological Society has announced their annual photo contest. The deadline to submit your best arthropod shot is October 19th.
September 28, 2009
Compare:
Lasius claviger at f/3.5
Lasius claviger at f/13
I wouldn't say that either image is better. The first is dreamier, more abstract, more interpretive. The second is crisp and illustrative. Quite a difference for a small tweaking of camera settings!
Most of my insect photography…
September 26, 2009
A: Check your house for any signs of ant-art. If, for instance, your garage sports a giant blue Azteca, you might have developed a myrmecological fixation.
On the other hand, if you consider yourself an ant-lover but lack any obvious ant adornments, you're falling behind. Pick up some paint and…
September 25, 2009
Nicrophorus orbicollis, Sexton Beetle, Illinois
The intrepid students of IB 468 caught this beautiful black burying beetle during a field trip to Dixon Springs, Illinois. They were kind enough to let me photograph it before it went to the collection.
Rather than me blathering on about this…
September 23, 2009
While in Florida earlier this year I turned over a leaf to find this gruesome scene:
A worker of the Florida Carpenter Ant (Camponotus floridanus) stationed along a leaf vein among a herd of scale insects. Except, without a head.
I honestly don't know what happened to the poor ant. Any ideas?
September 23, 2009
James Trager writes in this week with a request and a photo:
I have been interested in Polyergus (âAmazon antsâ, see here) since childhood, when I first had the good fortune to observe them on summer afternoons in northern New Mexico. After decades of intermittent field observations and microscopic…
September 21, 2009
A student at the University of Illinois navigates an aphid swarm between classes.
We've had plenty of traffic here at the Myrmecos Blog as bewildered midwesterners look for answers about the swarm of tiny insects that has descended on our cities this week. As best as we can tell, here's the…
September 20, 2009
Soybean aphids piling up in a spider web
It's been snowing aphids the past few days here in Champaign-Urbana. Trillions of them are drifting across town, settling out on our garden, getting caught in our hair. I've never seen anything like it.
I recently learned that this sternorrhynchan storm…
September 19, 2009
It's been ages since I hatched out monarch butterflies. But old habits die hard, and we've been raising a monarch caterpillar on our kitchen counter for the past few weeks.
This morning the orange and black product of our labors crawled from his chrysalis, inflated his wings, and flew off to an…
September 18, 2009
Odontotaenius disjunctus, the horned passalus
Friday Beetle Blogging returns this week with portraits of an unusually social beetle. The horned passalus Odontotaenius disjunctus lives in groups in rotting logs, where adults practice a form of parental care. I photographed this individual last…
September 17, 2009
Cimex lectularius - the common bedbug
Bed bugs are back. The resurgence of these blood-feeding pests is perhaps the biggest entomological story of the past decade. Take a look, for instance, at the Google search volume for "bed bugs" over the past few years:
Google Trends shows an increase…
September 17, 2009
...and creates a visual representation of the Pyramica page history over at iphylo:
This is a continuation of an issue I blogged about a couple months ago.
September 17, 2009
Marek Borowiec writes in this morning with a request for ant specimens from the subfamily Cerapachyinae:
Dear Colleagues,
I am currently working on the ant subfamily Cerapachyinae. I plan to work on both alpha-taxonomy as well as phylogeny of these ants. In the course of my study I will need as…
September 16, 2009
Lethocerus sp., California
I don't know how I missed it when it came out, but The Dragonfly Woman has a post up on how to identify the three North American genera of giant water bugs. Check it out.
September 15, 2009
Aphaenogaster tennesseensis ants and Entylia treehoppers
Cameras do not see the world the same way as do human eyes. Sometimes extra technological trickery is needed to make a scene appear as real in a photograph as it does in life. The above image is one of those cases.
I found these ants…
September 15, 2009
Ainsley Seago draws a fungus beetle
Rick Lieder shoots a firefly at sunset
Clay Bolt mows with the dictator
Doug Taron hibernates his butterflies
Bug Girl gets a car crush