awild | October 24, 2009Last week was Open Access Week. At the risk of sounding like a stick-in-the-mud, let me play devil's advocate to the blogosphere's near-universal celebration of Open Access (abbreviated, OA). Thus: I don't think most OA advocates have thought deeply enough about long-term implications.
First, though, what is Open Access?Â
OA is a publication model where scholars (or their subsidizers) foot the bill and readers enjoy studies free of charge. Anyone can log on and read an OA article with nary a registration or fee. OA marks a radical change from the traditional model, where most costs are…
awild | October 24, 2009The students of IB 401: Introduction to Entomology here at UI have started a bug blog, and they've taken to it like...um... belostomatids to water.
Go pay them a visit and leave some comments.
awild | October 23, 2009Female (left) and male Sandalus niger Cicada Parasite Beetles
Sandalus niger is one of the oddest beetles in eastern North America. While most parasitic insects are concentrated in other orders- notably Hymenoptera and Diptera- Coleoptera contains relatively few parasites. But there are a few.
Beetle larvae in the small polyphagan family Rhipiceridae attack cicada nymphs in their underground burrows. Our local species is Sandalus niger, and in the past week the spectacular inch-long adults have been gathering in mating aggregations on tree trunks around campus.
the remarkable antennae…
awild | October 22, 2009A sampling of face patterns in Polistes fuscatus paper wasps
Polistes fuscatus paper wasps sport a bewildering array of facial markings. Why is this?
A new paper by Michael Sheehan and Elizabeth Tibbetts in the journal Evolution suggests natural selection may favor rare patterns, leading to a proliferation of diversity. Sheehan & Tibbetts performed an elegant experiment on 18 groups of 4 foundress queens, painting three wasps with one pattern and the remaining one with a different pattern. Regardless of the details of the actual face markings, the rare pattern consistently received…
awild | October 22, 2009Malcom Gladwell to aspiring journalists:
The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going…
awild | October 21, 2009
Click to Gigapan this Linepithema ant head
Gigapan is a technology that stitches together hundreds of individual images to form a massive single image. It's hard to appreciate its power from just the small SEM image shown above, but if you click on the photo you'll be able to zoom to a marvelous level of detail.
More clickable gigapan ants below the fold.
awild | October 21, 2009Over at the Ant Farm Forum they're having another round of Name That Ant:
the mystery ant - photo by forum participant 'Harpegnathos'
Lodge your answer here.
While I'm on the topic of the Ant Farm Forum... The internet strikes me as a tremendous boon for ant enthusiasts. Anting is not one of those hobbies like, say, model rocketry or gardening, with sufficient interest to sustain local clubs that meet regularly. So ant people have historically carried out their activities in solitude.
Now that the internet allows ant enthusiasts from around the world to interact, it's probably much…
awild | October 19, 2009
Formica obscuripes
Trophallaxis- the social sharing of regurgitated liquids- is a fundamental behavior in the biology of most ant colonies. One ant approaches another, asks for a droplet of food, and if her partner is willing the two spend anywhere from a few seconds to several minutes in what is best described as a myrmecological french kiss. The behavior is so central to the life of ants that the insects have an entire stomach, separate from their digestive gut, devoted as a reservoir for social sharing.
Although the act involves a transfer of food, it would be a mistake to think of…
awild | October 17, 2009
National Geographic remains the world's premier showcase of nature photography. But I often wonder for how much longer.
It is easy to maintain a virtual monopoly on high quality imagery when camera equipment and publishing are expensive and require a highly specialized skill set. But neither of these things is true anymore. Professional-quality photo equipment is broadly affordable. And numerous online venues allow anyone with an internet connection to distribute their photos for free.
Consider the following fantastic arthropod photographers, all from the galleries of the free online…
awild | October 16, 2009Tetraponera merita Ward 2009, Madagascar
Tetraponera merita Ward 2009 is one of many aculeate species described in the pages of a new festschrift honoring Roy Snelling. I can't link to it, unfortunately, as the festschrift is printed the latest issue of the paper-only Journal of Hymenoptera Research.
All the same, if you can get your hands on a copy the effort is worth it, especially for a touching biography penned by Jack Longino and Roy's son, Gordon Snelling. The festschrift also holds a couple dozen articles spanning the ecology, chemistry, evolution, and systematics across a broad…
awild | October 16, 2009In the past week:
Solenopsis invicta reaches Missouri
Wasmannia auropunctata reported on Maui
awild | October 16, 2009
Scarites sp. Ground Beetle (Carabidae)
Urbana, Illinois
As the summer bug season freezes to a close here in Illinois, our attention turns increasingly to the cryptic habitats where insects settle in to overwinter. The flowers have faded, but insects can still be found under tree bark, in rotting wood, and in leaf litter. This ground beetle had burrowed under a stone, aided by its shovel-like fossorial forelegs.
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | October 15, 2009It's Thursday night. Here's a tick:
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | October 15, 2009Every year my part-time photography business does a little better than the year before. A few new clients, a few new venues, a few more visitors to my web sites. It's not a meteoric rise by any measure, but considering the current economic situation I am counting my blessings.
Naturally, of course, when business is good I muse about expanding it. What would it take to become a full-time professional photographer?
If I replaced all the time I spent running PCRs with time spent calling up potential clients and marketing my wares, and replaced the time I spent writing papers with time…
awild | October 13, 2009Male (left) and female Diapheromera femorata
Myrmecos blog commentators identified Sunday's mystery photo almost instantly as a stick insect laying an egg. The species is the Northern Walking Stick Diapheromera femorata, a common local insect easily collected by beating tree branches. We've taken a few home as pets, and the females are obligingly dropping several eggs a day.
The eggs of D. femorata resemble plant seeds
Photo details (top): Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D, ISO 200, f/5.6, 1/200 sec
(bottom): Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/13, 1…
awild | October 12, 2009Dipterist extraordinaire David Yeates writes:
If accepted, a recently proposed amendment to the ICZN allows for electronic publication of taxonomic names.... [T]he logical implications of this proposal are many and far reaching. For example, this change may lead to further advances so that zoological taxonomy bypasses traditional journal publication entirely...
I agree with Yeates. Taxonomy will migrate from paper journals to online databases, and this will happen sooner rather than later. But I think it worth noting that this is reflective of a broader change in scientific communication…
awild | October 11, 2009
Yeah, so I'm giving the Coca-Cola Corporation some free ad space. But it's a spectacular bit of animation, and they've paid a great deal of attention to getting the anatomical details right.