My profound apologies for the lack of blogitude here while I'm over at Photo Synthesis. Fortunately, the internet has other things in it:
- Myrmician shares an action series of Australian Podomyrma taking apart a much larger Myrmecia.
- Brian Valentine finds some British Myrmica with a serious mite problem.
- Steve Shattuck's Ants of Australia has been given an overhaul and a new URL.
- Roberto Keller explains ant mouths.
- Adrian Thysse has quite a nice photo blog, voyages about my camera.
***update*** There's also this bit in the New York Times. Who is that dashing young photographer?
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...well, not really. But an exchange I had at Photo Synthesis with Andrew Bleiman of Zooillogix got me thinking about all the different insects that have charmingly envenomated me at one time or another.
Myrmecia piliventris, Australia
So I'm starting a meme called Things That Have Stung Me. …
Atta texana queen and worker
Ant queens are those individuals in a nest that lay the eggs. They're pretty important, of course, as without reproduction the colony dwindles and disappears.
Understandably, ant-keepers have an interest in making sure their pet colonies have queens. Conversely,…
My apologies for the lack of posts. Life and work are conspiring this week to make blogging difficult. In the meantime, here's what's new in ants on the internet:
Roberto Keller explains the clypeus.
PLoS One reports that ant-dispersed plant lineages diversify more rapidly than ant-free…
By request, I have now organized the ant photos by subfamily. This mimics the arrangement from the old site. For the smug-muggers out there who want to know how it works, I basically set up an "old journal" gallery and put the genus names and links into the caption box. I used CSS to set all…
Hi, Alex-- I was just dropping in to say congrats on the NYT photos (which I see you're already linked to)-- they're great, as usual. I love the A. alfaroi fending off a trapjaw (?). (does that actually work?)
The slideshow seems more like a "greatest hits of ant photos" than an illustration of the actual related article, not that I'm complainin'. See if you can sneak some beetles in there next time you're on assignment! :D
Alex: stunning photos. As usual. Those two don't usually go together, but I'll make an exception for yours.
And what is so odd about the Malagasy mystery ants? Is it something other that the obvious things like the very interesting texture of their exoskeleton and what look like teeth on the insides of the mandibles? Those are odd enough, but I'm learning (here) there's no plumbing the depths of ant oddities.
Thanks guys!
Ainsley- I actually sent them 2 slide shows, one with just Anna's lab animals, but they chose the ant sampler instead. Go figure.
Mike- Mystrium is odd for many reasons. Some species have queens that are small and red, and look little at all like the big lumbering ones like the one I put in the slide show. They also use their mandibles as a sort of blunt club, pushing the tips together until one suddenly slips past the other.
Thanks for the plug, Alex!