awild

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Alex Wild

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February 11, 2010
click to enlarge The top-tier journal Nature doesn't often deal in purely phylogenetic research. So when such a study graces their pages we know it's big stuff. Yesterday, Nature published a 62 gene, 75 species analysis of the evolutionary history of the arthropods. Arthropods, as readers of this…
February 10, 2010
Plectroctena mandibularis, South Africa Every now and again someone asks how I get the white background on these sorts of stylized ant shots. Pretty simple: it's a sheet of cheap white printer paper. Overexposing the shot slightly by boosting the flash evens out the white. I set the ant down on…
February 10, 2010
It's no secret to anyone with an email inbox that the real internet is shadowed by a fake internet. The fake internet is full of fake blogs, fake web sites, fake discussion forums, and fake emails.  All full of real links to real companies who pay someone money to increase their visibility by…
February 9, 2010
Meinertellidae! It's a jumping bristletail. In California these flightless insects are common around harvester ant nests.  I don't think they have any sort of specialized relationship with ants, except perhaps finding the warm microclimate of the mound surface agreeable. Wings are an ancient…
February 9, 2010
Figure 1. Relationship between normalized metabolic rate and body mass for unitary organisms and whole colonies (from Hou et al 2010) The notion that insect colonies and their constituent individuals are analogous to multicellular organisms and their constituent cells has been a controversial…
February 8, 2010
What's this charming creature? Ten points for the first person to get the family name right, too.
February 7, 2010
In honor of the big game, here's one of my favorite Super Bowl commercials from years past:
February 5, 2010
fierce competition on wings and chitinous legs: hexapod haiku!
February 5, 2010
A male western hercules beetle, Arizona. Meet Dynastes granti. This behemouth of an insect is North America's heaviest scarab beetle, found in the mountains of the American southwest where adults feed on the sap of ash trees. I photographed these spectacular insects a few years ago while living…
February 4, 2010
James Trager is blogging.
February 4, 2010
A clarification, relevant the discussion below: Tree from Brady et al 2006.
February 4, 2010
Termite mounds visible in Australia's Northern Territory- I've circled three, but dozens are in the image. Central Illinois still resembles the frozen lifeless tundra, so to get my bug-hunting fix I've been surfing about on Google Earth. Here at -13.066783, 130.847383 I've found something:…
February 3, 2010
...are at it again: The twilight zone: ambient light levels trigger activity in primitive ants What's unfortunate about this title is that the judgement "primitive" has nothing to do with the research. It is unnecessary. The study is about how one species of ant uses ambient light levels to trigger…
February 3, 2010
This looks fun: image source
February 2, 2010
A reader asks: I also have a MP-E lens with the MT-24EX flash unit. I was curious to know something I didnât see you mention in your recent blog post about this setup. Could you share any technical points regarding how you achieve the visible backgrounds with that lens? In general, I get very nice…
February 2, 2010
Given that the current crop of video games is not nearly science-nerdy enough, my friend Rob Mitchell made this graphic as a helpful suggestion to anyone looking to design a new one. I'm just passing it along...
February 1, 2010
A first glance at Obama's proposed 2011 budget, and I feel relief.  Given earlier rumors of a freeze on discretionary spending I had feared the worst, but it seems our government is investing heavily in science as way out of the current economic mess.  The National Science Foundation (NSF) may…
February 1, 2010
According to a new study by Olivier Roux et al in PLoS One, she is spreading pheromones from a previously unknown gland: Abstract: In Oecophylla, an ant genus comprising two territorially dominant arboreal species, workers are known to (1) use anal spots to mark their territories, (2) drag their…
January 31, 2010
You may know Michel Gondry as the director of off-beat films like "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind". Gondry has also made a great number of music videos, including this mesmerizing time lapse of a cross-country drive: music is "Behind" by Lacquer
January 30, 2010
Pogonomyrmex badius Harvester Ants Archbold Biological Station, Florida, USA Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D. ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, diffused twin flash
January 28, 2010
Arachnids (you know, spiders and mites and things) never had much of a presence in my photo galleries.  While I could chalk their absence up to an obsessive focus on formicids, the reality is that I'm mildly arachnophobic.  Photographing spiders makes me squirm, so I don't do it very often. Oddly…
January 28, 2010
I did not expect everyone to nearly instantaneously solve yesterday's termite ball mystery.  I'm either going to have to post more difficult challenges (from now on, nothing will be in focus!) or attract a slower class of reader. Cuckoo fungus grows in a termite nest. As you surmised, those…
January 27, 2010
Mark this on your calendar: February 27 is the 27th annual Insect Fear Film Festival. Hosted by the entomology graduate students at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the festival showcases two (usually terrible) arthropod movies.  This year's delectable offerings are The Black…
January 27, 2010
...they're something far more interesting. Ten points to the first person who identifies the orange balls.  These were photographed inside a termite nest in southern Illinois last fall.
January 25, 2010
Tomorrow's NOVA on PBS covers the great orange butterflies on their migration to Mexico: Orange-and-black wings fill the sky as NOVA charts one of nature's most remarkable phenomena: the epic migration of monarch butterflies across North America. NOVA's filmmakers followed monarchs on the wing…
January 24, 2010
Here's something new. Instead of trawling youtube to find the Sunday Night Movie, I've made my own. Click above to watch the compressed version, or if you have a speedy connection click here to see it in full HD glory. I spent the afternoon experimenting with the video capabilities of the new…
January 23, 2010
Camponotus floridanus, the Florida Carpenter Ant Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D. ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, diffused twin flash
January 22, 2010
...and it's about ants, of course: The Trailhead Queen was dead. At first, there was no overt sign that her long life was ending: no fever, no spasms, no farewells. She simply sat on the floor of the royal chamber and died. As in life, her body was prone and immobile, her legs and antennae relaxed…
January 21, 2010
Amblyopone australis: a primitive ant? Earlier I chastised Christian Peeters and Mathieu Molet for misinterpreting the term "basal" in a phylogenetic context.  What was that about? The issue relates to the classic fallacy of viewing evolution as a linear progression from primitive to advanced.…
January 21, 2010
...than matching ant shirts? Courtesy of these guys. Thanks! (and yes, that's what we here at Myrmecos international headquarters look like).