awild | September 3, 2009[brightcove vid=36652867001&exp3=25500650001&surl=http://c.brightcove.com/services&pubid=1138077173&w=300&h=225]
As if job prospects weren't already bad enough for myrmecologists, now we're competing with chimps.
At least they haven't figured out how to make pooters. Yet.
awild | September 2, 2009I'm forever apologizing for the lack of blog activity. Sorry. I know.
I owe my vast and loyal readership (Hi Mom!) an explantion. Behind the scenes here at Myrmecos Industries we are 90% done with a significant overhaul of the ant photo collection. Essentially, the content of myrmecos.net is moving to the galleries at www.alexanderwild.com, with a significant restructuring of the latter to accomodate an orders-of-magnitude increase in imagery.
The process involves a lot of time-intensive tasks like captioning and keywording, as well as retouching older photos and adding in completely…
awild | August 27, 2009Here's your chance!
Anheuser-Busch has invited consumers to pitch ideas for a Bud TV spot that will run during the Chinese New Year in February 2010, Advertising Age reported Wednesday.
The spots must feature ants, which have starred in A-B commercials during the Chinese New Year for the past decade.
From five finalists picked Tuesday, judges will name the grand winner, who collects a $14,637 cash prize and gets to help produce the ad.
awild | August 26, 2009
Pyramica clypeata
Urbana, Illinois
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 | August 22, 2009Here's why blogging of late has been a little...uninspired:
Mingus plans his next paw print
We're busy with all those projects that are acquired with an old house. This weekend we are painting the kitchen and dining room. To the extent that Mingus the Cat will let us.
awild | August 20, 2009Biodiversity discovery continues apace. The past couple of weeks have seen not one, but TWO new myrmicine ant genera.
First, Shattuck described the Australian Austromorium:
Austromorium hetericki Shattuck 2009 - Australia
Then this morning, Fernández et al introduced a pretty little yellow ant from Brazil, Diaphoromyrma:
Diaphoromyrma sofiae Fernández et al 2009 - Brazil
Neither of these new ants show any unambiguous relationship to existing ant genera. But that's been the story with myrmicinae, even in the age of molecular systematics. The subfamily contains nearly half of all…
awild | August 19, 2009
In case you were wondering, ants turn out to be ambidextrous.
Instead of favoring one side or the other as we humans do with our hands, ants show no preference for working with either mandible. That's the conclusion of a new study by Cassill & Singh:
Abstract: The elongation and sharp teeth of ant mandibles are considered important adaptations that have contributed to ants successful colonization of terrestrial habitats worldwide. In extant ant species, mandibles function as hunting and defense weapons, as well as multipurpose tools for excavating soil, cutting leaves, capturing and…
awild | August 19, 2009The best way to cook a certain kind of caterpillar and make it taste really nice may not be the very best thing to do with a grasshopper. One you might want to parboil, the other one you might want to stir fry. Iâll give you a good example. A friend of mine and I cooked a certain type of scarab beetle for the first time ever last summer, and we simultaneously boiled, sautéed in a skillet, and toasted them. We all liked the toasted ones best.
-Zach Lemann, the Bug Chef
Philly2Philly has more. Zach Lemann, by the way, is one of the people behind the amazing Insectarium in New Orleans.
awild | August 13, 2009As if we systematists didn't have enough to worry about with the worldwide extinction crisis and the dwindling presence of taxonomists in academia, now we've got the vultures lawyers laying claim to the primary tools for our science.
Microsoft is trying to patent phylogenetics. No, seriously. Read the patent application.
I doubt that this particular application will survive. After all, Microsoft will have a hard time demonstrating the originality of their "invention" considering the thousands of published phylogenetic studies that predate their claim.
All the same, systematists should…
awild | August 12, 2009
Paratrechina longicornis
Florida
Their abdomens swollen with sugar water, two black crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) share a moment. This species has traveled around the globe with human commerce and is now common in warmers regions worldwide.
photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, indirect strobe in a white box
awild | August 10, 2009Carol Kaesuk Yoon opines:
We are, all of us, abandoning taxonomy, the ordering and naming of life. We are willfully...losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.
No wonder so few of us can really see what is out there.
awild | August 10, 2009
Pogonomyrmex maricopa (at left) tussles with an Aphaenogaster albisetosa at the Aphaenogaster nest entrance.
While in Arizona, I chanced upon a set of ant fights that I'd observed several times previously. Single workers of the maricopa harvester ant Pogonomyrmex maricopa would approach a nest of their competitor, Aphaenogaster long-legged ants, and spend a few minutes drawing heat from the guards before wandering off.
Same thing, but different individuals (note differences in limb wounds from the previous photo)
The interaction is common enough that it really couldn't be just a chance…
awild | August 10, 2009This week, Public Radio International is hosting a forum whereby you- the fine people of the General Public- get a chance to converse online with eminent entomologist May Berenbaum about all things DDT.
The forum accompanies a piece from last week's "The World". For background, you can read Berenbaum's recent Washington Post essay about the DDT-malaria problem here:
What people aren't remembering about the history of DDT is that, in many places, it failed to eradicate malaria not because of environmentalist restrictions on its use but because it simply stopped working. Insects have a…
awild | August 9, 2009In a rare bit of good environmental news, herpetologist extraordinaire Rich Glor travels to Haiti in search of a potentially extinct Anolis lizard and finds a pair of surviving populations.
awild | August 7, 2009A British film crew is in Arizona to film "Planet of the Ants," a National Geographic Television documentary about the picnic-spoiling arthropods.
The filmmakers, who shot in Phoenix and Tucson over the past couple of weeks, are now in the town of Portal, near the New Mexico border, until Wednesday, when they'll head back to England.
The leader of the crew, producer Martin Dohrn, director of the British production company Ammonite Ltd., said Arizona is a prime spot for ant filming."
More here, and my photo essay on the filming is here.
awild | August 5, 2009Doesn't "bigote" mean "moustache" in Spanish?
Why, yes. It does.
Pheidole bigote Longino 2009
Chiapas, Mexico
The inimitable Jack Longino published a taxonomic paper today on the Central American Pheidole, including descriptions of some 23 new species. Among these is the marvelously moustached P. bigote. The function of the fantastic facial hair remains unknown.
source: Longino, J. T. 2009. Additions to the taxonomy of New World Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 2181: 1-90.Â
awild | August 5, 2009
Here's a novel use for an ant photo. German designer Beat Hintermann induced a party of wedding guests to individually color in squares from one of my images of fighting Odontomachus. The pieces were then assembled as a gift to the happy couple. Both, I'm told, study the aggressive interactions of ants.
Love can arise in the oddest of circumstances.
awild | August 4, 2009Here's an image for the textbooks:
Ants, like butterflies, pass through egg, larva, and pupa phases on their way to adulthood. While in Florida earlier in this summer I found a nest of the twig ant Pseudomyrmex gracilis with brood present in all stages, providing the material to make these images.
The key was placing the developing ants on a glass slide. This provided distance between them and the cardboard background, so that the backdrop is blurred while the insects remain in sharp focus. These images are not what I'd call fine art, but I'm happy with them as solid illustrations of ant…
awild | August 3, 2009
Swooping from the top of a saguaro down to the desert floor: Howard Bourne swings the crane while Martin Dohrn drives the camera. Tucson Mountain Park.
What was I doing in Arizona last month?
Thanks for asking. I was helping a film crew wrangle harvester ants for an upcoming National Geographic documentary. The crew, an all-star cast of nature cinematographers including Martin Dohrn, Howard Bourne, and Gavin Thurston, is still in the field- you can follow their progress by blog. The program is tentatively titled "Planet of the Ants" and should be on television in 2010.
If there's one…