Alex Wild
awild
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I'm leaving shortly for the 2008 International Congress of Entomology in Durban, South Africa. This means another break from the blog for me, but when I return in mid-July there will be plenty of African insect photos. St. Lucia, where I'm headed the week before the conference, has African…
A close-in crop of the body:
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250sec exposure
Yesterday's unexpectedly intense monsoon storms brought several inches of rain and flash floods to Tucson. Many of our desert ants cue their mating flights with the onset of the summer rains, and this morning the Forelius were flying, congregating in dense swarms that twirled and twisted…
Arizona has five seasons: Fall, Winter, Spring, Summer, and Monsoon. Monsoon is my favorite.
By late June or early July, intense summer heat on the interior of the continent sets up a weather pattern pulling tropical moisture up from the south. After several weeks of baking at 106° with not a…
Via GTDA comes this mesmerizing time lapse video demonstrating the efficiency of ant recruitment:
A century ago, William Morton Wheeler inked this iconic illustration of the striking polymorphism displayed among members of an ant colony. You may have seen it; Andrew Bourke and Nigel Franks used it as the cover for their 1995 text Social Evolution in Ants.
I always assumed Wheeler's figure…
We celebrated the repair of our computer by having a KitKat. A British Kitkat, that is. I never liked the cheap corn-syrupy flavor of the American version.  But the original british kitkat is a world apart- it's really quite good. The chocolate actually tastes like…
Yes, the computer is still in the shop. But there's still Gogol Bordello and what is quite possibly the world's best song:
The computer is still broken.  So here at Myrmecos Blog we're still on vacation. I should be back online within a week or two.
Derobrachus hovorei - Palo Verde Borer
Cerambycidae
Tucson, Arizona
Every June, hundreds of thousands of giant beetles emerge from beneath the Tucsonian soil. The enormous size of these beetles- up to several inches long- makes them among the most memorable of Tucson's insects. They cruise…
My main blogging/photography machine has gone down and will be in the shop for a few weeks. I don't think I'll be buying another Gateway desktop- the current failure is not the first time.
In the meantime, you may amuse yourselves with the amazing Spider Dog:
Taxonomists are busy, busy people. Their efforts in the year 2006 have just been released by Arizona State University's Institute for Species Exploration. Within insects, here's the breakdown by order:
The Institute has also compiled a whimsical "Top Ten" list of their favorite new species.…
...continue to accumulate poignant stories. Go read.
30 years ago, biologists thought they'd solved one of Darwin's thorniest problems, the evolution of sterile social insects:
No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,âcases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have…
Cymatodera sp. Checkered Beetle (Cleridae)
Arizona
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/16, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, indirect strobe in a white box
Odontomachus coquereli - Madagascar
Myrmecology continues to lead the way in online taxonomy. Today saw the release of the very first taxonomic paper published by the top-tier open access science journal, PLoS One.
Brian Fisher and Alex Smith combine alpha taxonomy with DNA barcoding to produce a…
As if we didn't already have enough pest ants to worry about, here is a relatively new one. The rover ant Brachymyrmex patagonicus, a tiny South American species, has been working its way under the radar across the southern United States. Its presence is now large enough that pest control…
Centruroides sculpturatus - Arizona Bark Scorpion
I have a hard time getting worked up over stuff that happened 25 years ago. But here's something that still angers me every time I think of it.
One of those educational safety movies we were shown back in grade school- you know, the "Stop-Drop-and…
This basic photo of a harvester ant carrying a seed took an hour and a half to capture. 150 exposures. The problem wasn't that the ants weren't behaving, but that it took nearly an hour of experimentation to get the simplicity of composition I had envisioned when I set out on the project.
Few of…
We went down to the Rialto last night to catch a benefit concert by Calexico. Best show I've seen in ages. They pull off an unexpected blend of mariachi, folk, and straight-up rock, including a Neil Young cover featuring two full mariachi bands and a slew of guest vocalists on stage. Calexico…
Olla v-nigrum - Ashy Grey Ladybird Beetle
Arizona
Here it is: the very first ladybird beetle featured on the Friday Beetle Blog. Instead of a boring ol' red and black one, I've chosen a stylish and tasteful beetle colored in grayscale: the Ashy Gray Ladybird. These have been arriving in some…
Spring is swarm season for honeybees, and the feral population in Tucson is booming. We've got not one but two new colonies nesting in dead trees in our yard. I didn't do anything to attract them, they just moved in on their own.
My feelings about honey bees are mixed.
On one hand, I have many…
Scott Solomon, who researches fungus-growing ants, has a brief piece in Slate Magazine on the Paratrechina Crazy Ants invading Houston.
I'm not convinced that this ant is anything different from Paratrechina fulva, a common South American species and the oldest name in that species complex. People…
Lycaena xanthoides - Great Copper
California
A butterfly larva peeks through a hole it has eaten in its Rumex host plant.
Apparently either Jo-anne or I share a name with, or similar to, someone on the U.S. government's secret terrorist watch list. I can't say which of us it is; no one at the airport is authorized to tell us that. All I know is we were prevented from checking in at the Tucson airport on…
Carpophilus sp. Sap Beetle, Nitidulidae
Arizona
The Opuntia prickly-pear cacti have been flowering the past few weeks. Every time I poke at a blossom I find several chunky Carpophilus beetles.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash…
Opamyrma hungvuong Yamane et al 2008
Vietnam
It isn't every day we get a whole new genus. In this week's Zootaxa, Seiki Yamane, Tuan Vet Bui, and Katsuyuki Eguchi report the discovery of Opamyrma, an amblyoponine ant from central Vietnam. The full article is behind Zootaxa's subscription…