Alex Wild
awild
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I will be spending the remainder of July in Arizona without regular internet access. It is monsoon season in the desert and the insects are at peak activity, so the hiatus now means better photoblogging later.
In the meantime, here's one of our local Polyergus:
Polyergus montivagus,…
The folks at the wildlife film company Ammonite are gearing up to do a documentary about ants and are looking for a few good stories about fire ants. Here's the announcement:
We are looking at is the growing success of the non-native (Exotic) Fire Ant (Solenopsis invicta). We'd like to hear…
No, I haven't forgotten you all. We're still busy moving to the new house. Blogging will remain slow until we get the internet connected, and given the way that AT&T has managed to botch just about everything else so far I don't know if that will happen any time soon. (There's really…
(a) current distribution of Sasquatch (b) Sasquatch distribution post-climate change
For those of you dallying around about how seriously to take the threat of climate change, here's something for you. If we don't cease our emissions of greenhouse gases pronto, Bigfoot will invade…
A while back, Mike Kaspari asked me if I might be able to produce an image that really captures the essence of the leaf litter ant fauna*. A conceptual shot that would be useful for presentations and the like. It wasn't immediately clear how to do this, as the leaf litter is a dark,…
For reasons that aren't clear to me, but are possibly related to the onset of summer bug season, traffic here at myrmecos blog has surged over the past few weeks. We're now getting more daily visitors than do my galleries at myrmecos.net.
I'd like nothing more than to entertain all the new…
I hadn't anticipated that my keen readers would try to guess the *species* of the aforementioned oddity, but since the guessing has headed in that direction I'll post this hint, which shows the much more commonly seen worker caste of our little mystery bug.
Stakes are now at, um, 15 points. Yeah.
Well. I'm off to host a photography workshop. But in the meantime I can't resist passing along this video. In honor of Michael Jackson, of course.
ht: nyt
This odd little beast crawled out of a leaf litter sample from a mesic oak/pine forest in Florida. Ten points to the first person who picks what it is.
(Not sure what you'll do with ten points. But hey. You're all a creative lot.)
A few months ago we learned via an unintentionally leaked press release that a team of researchers lead by Nicole Gerardo and Cameron Currie had won a Roche Applied Sciences grant competition. The team will be sequencing the complete genome of 14 players from the ant/fungus/microbe co-…
Alaus oculatus (Elateridae) - The Eyed Elater
Illinois
One of North America's largest beetles, the eyed elater is more than an inch long. Alaus oculatus is widespread in the deciduous forests of eastern North America where their larvae are predators of wood-boring beetles. Other…
Paratrechina Nylanderia phantasma
Archbold Biological Station, Florida
Here's an ant I almost didn't notice. Paratrechina Nylanderia phantasma is one of the least known insects in North America, active at night and restricted to a particular type of sandy soil in Florida. Workers are…
...when I disappeared to Argentina recently, I was with my wife.
Here she is, collecting ants in the mountains near Tafà de Valle:
photo details: Canon 17-40mm f4.0 L lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 400, 1/250 sec, f11.0, with circular polarizer & gradient filter
on-camera fill flash
Shortly before I left for Florida, my post on the taxonomy of Strumigenys spurred a comment from an anonymous colleague:
I wouldnât be so bold as to publish so many evaluations of ideas without the backing of formal peer review. I wouldnât be as concerned about the validity of my criticisms, but…
An ant, climbing from the pit of a predatory ant lion.
The predator, buried in sand at the base of the pit, hurls a volley of debris towards its target.
Caught in the falling sand, the ant slides back into the pit.
The ant tries to escape, and again the unseen predator hurls a load of sand…
Pogonomyrmex badius
The Archbold Biological Station hosts 100+ species of ants. Here are a few of them.
Trachymyrmex septentrionalis
Platythyrea punctata
Strumigenys rogeri
Cyphomyrmex rimosus (queen)
Dorymyrmex bureni
Brachymyrmex obscurior
Paratrechina longicornis…
For those of you accessible to central Illinois, I will be hosting a free insect photography workshop next Sunday at the University of Illinois Pollinatarium. The workshop is offered in celebration of the 3rd annual National Pollinator Week. Details are as follows:
Insect Photography…
dawn in the scrub
I spent last week in central Florida at the Archbold Biological Station.
Archbold preserves 5,000 hectares of Florida sand scrub, some of the last remaining patches of an ecosystem now largely lost to agriculture and strip malls. The sand scrub is an odd place, a fossil…
So when we say ants can teach us something, itâs not that we should all aspire to live like an ant. That would be horrible. What ants can teach is that networks of labor distribution, where communications are good and where each groupâs work benefits the other, are effective.
Read the whole thing…
Opisthius richardsoni, Montana.
Opisthius richardsoni is a broad, flat ground beetle common along river banks in the colder regions of western North America.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper
1. Temnothorax curvispinosus
2. Polyergus sp. nr. breviceps
3. Aphaenogaster tenneesseensis (queen)
4. Aphaenogaster fulva/rudis complex
5. Camponotus pennsylvanicus
6. Pyramica reflexa
A velvet mite forages over a rotting log in Urbana, Illinois.
I don't photograph all that many mites, but if these miniature arachnids are your thing you should visit Macromite's amazing mite blog.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash…
As in the previous quiz, these ants are all found in Illinois:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
Answers will be posted on Thursday.
A recent study by Gabriela Pirk in Insectes Sociaux provides me with an excuse to share this photo:
Minor workers of the seed harvester Pheidole spininodis (left) and the predatory Pheidole bergi lock jaws in combat. Jujuy, Argentina.
Pirk et al examined the diet of both Pheidole species in the…
Formica exsectoides carries off a seed of a non-native plant, leafy spurge
Ants are considered beneficial insects for their roles as predators, scavengers, and dispersers of plant seeds. But when the seeds belong to a pest plant, the ants' role may change to that of accomplice in an…
A Podabrus soldier beetle hides away in the leafy folds of an understory plant in an eastern deciduous forest. Soldier beetles (family Cantharidae) are predators of other arthropods.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused…
Image by Flickr user traviswilcoxen
Tomorrow morning I leave for a week at the Archbold Biological Station in the scrublands of central Florida. Archbold is a magical place filled with charmingly unique plants and animals. I spent a summer there in 1995; this will be my first visit since…
I see that the TimeTree of Life project is now public. This collaborative project draws on the research of dozens of biologists to estimate the timing of past evolutionary divergences. The work is available as a book, but the online version has an interactive section that allows the…
For a change of pace around here. Â These were photographed last weekend in Brownfield Woods in Urbana, Illinois.
A micropezid fly guards a prime patch of bird poop
A scuttle fly (Phoridae) on a mushroom
Chrysopilus sp. (Rhagionidae)
Long-legged fly (Dolichopodidae)
If any of you…