...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.  The rules are simple: List all the things that have stung you. Bites don't count. Pass the meme to 3 or more other bloggers you suspect have also been well-zinged. Here are mine. Things that have stung me: Ants: Pachycondyla verenae Pachycondyla harpax Pachycondyla villosa Pachycondyla…
One of the most vociferous debates in taxonomy is over a catchy-sounding concept called DNA barcoding.  Since nearly all organisms carry a version of the COI gene in the mitochondrion, the idea is that the DNA sequence of the gene can serve as a standard identification marker.  A barcode, of sorts.  Of course, the practice only works if species have unique COI sequences.  Which they do, much of the time, and the barcoders consequently have been successful in garnering research money and churning out publications. So what's the problem? There are two major objections.  The first is…
Eastern Treehole Mosquito My commercial gallery now has flies! Diptera photographs at alexanderwild.com I feel sort of embarassed at how few fly images I have, considering the importance of the group. That's something I'll try to remedy as we get into this summer's photography season.
A bold paper by Rob Dunn et al in Ecology Letters is making news this month.   Dunn and an impressive list of coauthors pool observations of ant species richness from more than 1000 sites worldwide, finding that southern hemisphere habitats consistently support more species than their equivalents in the northern hemisphere.  The pattern appears to be predicted primarily, but not entirely, by climate. These results strike me as intuitively correct, and I suspect anyone who has collected ants in both hemispheres will agree.  Brazil's fauna is spectacularly rich.  That of Oklahoma, less so…
Here's an old shot from the files: Formica aerata- the grey field ant- California photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60 ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
From the NOVA episode "Lord of the Ants"
...and it was fun. Here are some highlights from the past week: Why do only some ants sting? Competing for space on a fake walnut The case of the Malagasy mystery ants Here's one bit of information that might be useful for anyone thinking about starting a blog. The ScienceBlogs network- which hosts Photo Synthesis- is driven by Moveable Type software. The Myrmecos Blog uses Wordpress.  Having spent time now in both platforms, I've decided that I much prefer Wordpress- it's more intuitive, more flexible, and it handles images more smoothly. This isn't to say that blogging for ScienceBlogs…
"Lean on Me", by Lesley Smitheringale The Burrard-Lucas brothers held a wildlife portait competition, and the results are simply spectacular.  Click here to see the winners.
Mayapple Brownfield woods, Urbana, Illinois photo details: Canon 17-40x wide angle lens on a Canon EOS 50D ISO 400, 1/30 sec, f/7.1, leaf backlit with handheld 550ex strobe.
...when my photos are on the radio.
Benoit Guenard has been hard at work the past couple years compiling broad-scale distribution data for all the world's ants, and his efforts are now online.  Here they are- global range maps for all the ant genera: http://www.antmacroecology.org/ant_genera/index.html These maps will be a very useful resource, especially if the myrmecological community participates to add new records and vet the occasional error. One thought, though, is that large umbrella strategies such as this will eventually be redundant with antweb.org.   Antweb's distributions are built from accumulated individual…
It has long been known that ants recognize their deceased nestmates using the smell of fatty acids that accumulate as the body decomposes.  The chemical signature of deadness helps ants remove the corpses from their midst, keeping a clean and sanitary nest. Indeed, this classic tale of ants and oleic acid is one of E. O. Wilson's favorite stories. But it turns out that the story is even richer than previously supposed.  A study by Dong-Hwan Choe et al published in yesterday's PNAS note that Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) carry away the dead even before the fatty acids appear.  It…
...read about them at Photo Synthesis.
..over at Photo Synthesis: How to attract an entomologist Agrarian ants Another way to humanize an insect photo Ants in the New York Times Photo technique: the white box Humanizing the hordes: Anthropomorphism and science photography
Seriously, is there a name for the disorder whereby people think everything with wings is a honeybee?
Atta cephalotes, in the fungus garden Big ant news today!  Roche Applied Sciences is apparently funding the sequencing of a series of genomes- three ant and an array of fungal and microbial genomes- in an ambitious project to better understand the relationships among the players in the celebrated ant-fungus relationship.  The sequencing project is headed by Nicole Gerardo of Emory University and Cameron Currie of the University of Wisconsin. This trend in genomics away from sequencing isolated organisms in favor of comparative projects is a welcome one.  With multiple attine species- in…
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?
Posted to EvolDir: We are getting a new science building and one of the features will be beautiful floor to 3-story ceiling glass panels depicting various (somewhat abstract) images from science. I am looking for high resolution pictures of butterfly wing spots, close-ups of animal eyes, close-ups of feathers, or close-ups of color patterns on your favorite creature (we have plenty of plant images). If you can send me an image or a website address and PERMISSION to use these photos, I would be grateful! Sincerely, Amy McMillan, Ph.D, Buffalo State College (mcmillam@buffalostate.edu)
In the event you thought your weekend wasn't much fun, consider Nicholas White, who spent 41 hours trapped in an elevator one weekend in 1999.  Here's the time-lapse security video: The story is recounted by the New Yorker.