Alex Wild
awild
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From the BBC's excellent, if overly dramatic, wildlife unit:
Amyrmex: Dolichoderinae? Leptanilloidinae? Who knew?
A paper out this week in Zootaxa reminds us of the hazards of excessive reliance on the worker caste for ant taxonomy. Phil Ward and Seán Brady sequenced DNA from few genes from the enigmatic Amyrmex, a rarely-collected dolichoderine…
Myrmecos seems to have caught the eye of the editors at ScienceBlogs, and I've been contracted to inaugurate a new photography site for their network. Photo Synthesis will be a rotating showcase of science imagery:
The internet is home to a wealth of captivating science images, from the…
Sorry to keep harping on Hoelldobler & Wilson's The Superorganism. But Wilson's section on ant evolution is so bad, so out of touch with the state of the field that I can't help but to rant.
Both Chapter 7 (The Rise of the Ants) and Chapter 8 (Ponerine Ants: The Great Radiation) are…
...whose arrival is apparently scored with new-age music and accompanied by your choice of beverage. Be warned.
This weekend's various themes included hard drive failure, federal income taxes, and a wayward National Geographic film crew. We've put out most of the larger fires, but at the expense of blogging, I'm afraid.
On the bright side, we have some exciting news to announce in a day or two.
Hikers at Purmamarca
Bits and pieces of landscapes, northern Argentina, March 2009.
El Palmar National Park
Cardon cactus, Amaicha del Valle
Termas de Reyes, Jujuy
Copina, Córdoba
Soybeans, ad infinitum
Purmamarca market
Purmamarca market
Purmamarca
Infiernillos, Tucuman
high…
Kalathomyrmex emeryi (Forel 1907), Argentina.
In Zootaxa last week, Christiana Klingenberg and Beto Brandão introduced to the world an entirely new genus of fungus-growing ant, Kalathomyrmex. Yet the single species, K. emeryi, is a widespread neotropical insect that has been known for…
This afternoon NPR is running an entertaining bit on Ed Wilson's research on how ants identify their deceased nestmates.
Plus, they seem to have made a LOLant out of one of my Odontomachus photos.
and gives us a list of photography's advantages over specimen collection:
You donât need permits to take images.
You can take images of wildlife and people (you canât âcollectâ those!).
Storage of images takes a lot less room than storage of an insect collection.
It takes less time to prepare an…
Pampas grass against an Argentine sky. Córdoba.
Was Argentina fabulous? Yes. Am I exhausted after a sleepless overnight flight? Also.
I'll try to think of some things to write about the trip once I'm lucid. In the meantime I'd like to thank guest bloggers Scott and…
Nemognatha Blister Beetle, California.
Some of the oddest blister beetles in western North America are in the genus Nemognatha. Their mouthparts have become elongate to form a proboscis- a common trait among other groups of insects- but rare among the beetles. They are commonly seen…
Procryptocerus mayri, Venezuela.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
From the recent documentary Ants: Nature's Secret Power, a glimpse of how researchers study ant behavior in the lab:
Omoglymmius, wrinkled bark beetle (Rhysodini). California.
Rhysodine beetles make their living feeding on slime molds under the bark of decaying trees . They are instantly recognizable from the grooves on their backs and from their distinctly moniliform (bead-like) antennae. The…
Since you're all being so well-behaved while I'm in the field, here's a new wallpaper for your 1680 x 1055 desktop:
Lucidota atra, the black firefly. New York.
Not all fireflies luminesce. Lucidota atra is a day-flying species, common in eastern North America, with vestigial light-producing organs.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/13, flash…
Near Cruz de Eje, Argentina
Tomorrow I leave for three ant-filled weeks in northern Argentina. Don't despair, though, the Myrmecos Blog will not go into remission. Scott Powell will be taking the reins for the rest of the month, and Eli Sarnat will drop in once or twice to regale us with…
This photo was ultimately rejected for a journal cover (it was the wrong shape!) but I shot it to accompany a research article that used museum specimens of midwestern bumblebees to compare current levels of genetic diversity with previous decades. Since this image won't appear in print…
Achenbach, A., Foitzik, S. 2009. FIRST EVIDENCE FOR SLAVE REBELLION: ENSLAVED ANT WORKERS SYSTEMATICALLY KILL THE BROOD OF THEIR SOCIAL PARASITE PROTOMOGNATHUS AMERICANUS . Evolution, Online Early, doi: 10.1111/j.1558-5646.2009.00591.x
Abstract: During the process of coevolution, social…
We're a little bit hectic behind the scenes here at Myrmecos Blog. I seem to have recovered from the flu, finally, and that means a week of work catch up on. That, and I'm leaving for Argentina in a few days. It's a conspiracy of deadlines, so you'll have to bear with us while…
Gnamptogenys mordax, Venezuela.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
Those of you who were into ants in the early '90s might remember SimAnt, a simulation game where you control the decisions your ants make to steer a colony to dominance over a competing species in a suburban lawn.
The game is based, in part, on the optimality equations summarized in Oster &…
Just a reminder. The infamous annual Insect Fear Film Festival (this year's theme: centipedes!) is happening tomorrow night on campus here in Urbana-Champaign.
More information:
http://www.life.uiuc.edu/entomology/egsa/ifff.html
Trichodes ornatus, the ornate checkered beetle. California.
Don't let the pretty colors fool you. Trichodes ornatus, like many checkered beetles, is a fierce predator whose larvae attack the young of wood-boring insects.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO…