awild | November 23, 2008I've posted enough Friday Beetles that I can no longer remember which species I've already done. Some species were almost posted twice out of sheer forgetfulness. Must be the academic scatter-brain.
So to keep them all straight I've made a list. This is mostly for my own good. In any case, here is the Friday Beetle Directory:
Adranes - Ant-Nest Beetle
Onthophagus gazella - Gazelle Scarab
Dineutes sublineatus - Whirligig Beetle
Lutrochus - Travertine Beetle
Scaphinotus petersi - Snail-eating Beetle
Laccophilus pictus - Predaceous Diving Beetle
Apteroloma caraboides - Snowfield Beetle…
awild | November 22, 2008
I sometimes wonder if a major reason why most people don't really get insects is the difference in pace between how we and how the insects move in the world.
Insects live faster than we do, their everyday motions an erratic, unintelligible blur to our sluggish perceptions. But slow them down so that we can see them on their own terms, and they seem almost as different creatures, more deliberate, more wise, and certainly much less buggy.
awild | November 21, 2008 My copy arrived from Amazon the day before yesterday. I've not given it anything more than a couple cursory thumb-throughs, but I'm immediately left with the impression of schizophrenia.
The bits on social organization, behavior, communication, and levels of selection- mostly Bert Hoelldobler's sections- seem an engaging and modern review, while the chapters dealing with ant history and evolution- Wilson's area- are... How do I say this diplomatically? Rubbish.
The past ten years have brought immeasurable advances in our knowledge of ant evolution, both in breadth and detail. …
awild | November 21, 2008
Priacma serrata - Bleach Beetle
California
Priacma serrata is an enigmatic insect from the conifer forests of western North America and is one of a handful of species belonging to the relictual beetle suborder Archostemata. It is often thought of as a "living fossil", bearing a strong resemblance to the earliest known beetles that pre-date even the dinosaurs.
Males are attracted to the scent of bleach, presumably because it resembles a female pheromone, and are sometimes collected off air-drying laundry. In spite of its unique evolutionary position, the biology of Priacma has not been…
awild | November 20, 2008
Atta cephalotes
Leafcutting ants of the genus Atta have perhaps the most complex caste systems of all the social insects. Mature colonies contain millions of workers of varying shapes and sizes. Here are two sisters from opposing ends of the spectrum.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | November 18, 2008In the comments, Rob Clack asks:
Iâve just read about Martialis on Pandaâs Thumb and have a question. If I interpret it correctly, your cladogram shows Martialis to be the sister group of all living ants. Since it was blind and many living genera are not, that presumably implies that vision evolved independently within modern ants. I would therefore expect there to be some significant differences between modern ant eyes and those of other hymenoptera.
I assume Iâm missing something.
Rob is referring to this post, going straight to the problem that Martialis seemingly poses for our…
awild | November 18, 2008
A young adult Comperia merceti, a parasitoid wasp in the family Encyrtidae, emerges from the egg case of its cockroach host.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | November 16, 2008
Pyramica ludovici - KZN, South Africa
I am still working through the South African ant photos I took this July. Progress is slow. I'm not terribly familiar with the African fauna, and the species have to be keyed out and checked against the literature so I can post images with the proper identification. All the same, I'm not 100%.
What I've learned in the process is that Brian Taylor's Ants of Africa site is indispensable. The interface is a bit web-1.0-clunky, but the content is exactly what I need. This morning I keyed the above Pyramica to the pan-African species P. ludovici in…
awild | November 15, 2008Sometimes, it's best not to interject statistics into your personal life.
h/t Podblack Cat
awild | November 15, 2008A few places where myrmecos.net photographs have recently appeared:
La Banque de Savoirs has a French-language slideshow featuring several of my images.
The BBC illustrates a recent news item on the link between pests and climate change using an Argentine Ant photo from my back yard in California.
The Xerces Society- North America's premier invertebrate conservation group - is borrowing myrmecos.net images for banners here and here.
GIANT MICROBES, the folks responsible for plush Syphilis, are using images to accompany their new line of plush Lasius and Solenopsis.
awild | November 14, 2008
Nosodendron californicum - Wounded Tree Beetle
California, USA
From the Department of Really Obscure Insects, here's a beetle that few non-specialists will recognize. Nosodendron inhabits the rotting tissue of long-festering tree wounds. These beetles are not rare so much as specialized to an environment where few entomologists think to look.  If you can spot the telltale stains of an old wound on the trunks of large trees, you should be able to find Nosodendron. They feed on the microbes- the yeast and bacteria- that grow in the sap leaking from the phloem.
There are, in fact, whole…
awild | November 13, 2008
Atta cephalotes carrying leaves, Ecuador
Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution this morning has the first detailed molecular phylogeny of the leafcutting ant genus Atta. MaurÃcio Bacci et al sequenced several mitochondrial genes and the nuclear gene EF-1a from 13 of the 15 described species-level taxa, using them to infer the evolutionary history of the genus.
This is an important paper.Â
Atta is the classic leafcutter ant of the new world tropics and a model system for co-evolution among the ants, the fungi they cultivate, and a suite of microbes that either parasitize or protect the…
awild | November 12, 2008
Kaspari et al. discover that coastal ants avoid salt while inland ants can't get enough.
Kaspari, M., Yanoviak, S. P., and Dudley, R. 2008. On the biogeography of salt limitation: a study of ant communities. PNAS early edition, doi: 10.1073/pnas.0804528105.
Barry Bolton and Brian Fisher continue their taxonomic work on the African ponerines in a recent issue of Zootaxa. The paper establishes a new genus, Feroponera.
Bolton, B. & Fisher, B. L. 2008. Afrotropical ants of the ponerine genera Centromyrmex Mayr,…
awild | November 12, 2008
If they gave out awards for Goofiest Bug, Psocoptera (Bark Lice) would surely make the short list.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | November 11, 2008
"Magic circle - Venezuela" by Benoit Guenard
The NCSU insect blog has announced its 2008 photo contest winners.
Myrmecologist Benoit Guenard took Best in Show for his "Magic Circle" macro of a stingless bee nest. Deservedly, in my opinion. That's an awesome shot.
awild | November 10, 2008
Neivamyrmex army ants attacking a pavement ant, California
I see this morning that Daniel Kronauer has published a review of army ant biology in Myrmecological News. The paper, among other topics, attempts to straighten out some key terminology:
AenEcDo army ant: a connotation free abbreviation that is introduced here to avoid the term "true" army ant. It collectively refers to species in the three subfamilies Aenictinae, Ecitoninae, and Dorylinae and is strictly taxonomically defined.
Army ant: any ant species with the army ant adaptive syndrome.
Army ant adaptive syndrome: a life-…