awild | April 30, 2008
Crypticerya bursera Unruh 2008
Baja California
Cory Unruh describes a new species of scale insect in the genus Crypticerya in this week's Zootaxa. The diagram above shows a highly stylized version of the back (at left) and underbelly (at right) of the insect, with peripheral illustrations of the various pores, appendages and hairs. Scale insects have such an unusual morphology that the people who work on them have had to create a unique system for keeping track of their various characters. Most entomologists- myself included- require additional training to make sense of it.
Like all scale…
awild | April 29, 2008
If you're having trouble filling that bare wall over your desk, the Bohart Museum of Entomology has just the thing: a new line of insect posters. The invasive ant poster above was designed by Fran Keller from auto-montage images by Eli Sarnat, Jasmine Joseph, and Anna Lam.
awild | April 27, 2008
Myrmecos.net is 5 years old. It has grown from a few dozen photographs to about 4,000, and in recent years 1,500 people visit the site every day. In spite of the site's high profile, myrmecos has not changed in any fundamental way since it first went online in 2003 (archived versions are accessible here). The pages are simple 1990's technology, hand-written in html. There are no underlying databases, just scores of flat files stored in folders. If you do any web design you can imagine what a pain in the behind it is to manage a static site with thousands of individual html files.
It is…
awild | April 26, 2008Jo-anne has made a project of reorienting me towards a more Australian temperament. Her tactics are subtle but persistent. If I send her off to the video store, for instance, she comes home with some Aussie movie or another.
The most insidious of her methods includes buying CDs of Australian bands and playing them until they sink into my subconscious. These are hit or miss. I've not become a big You am I fan. But now and again Jo-anne finds something that takes hold. One of my new favorites is Missy Higgins:
awild | April 26, 2008
The New York Times has a piece on Ansel Adams.
Spot the fake smile!
Get your fix of Cicada Mania.
And finally...Polar Bear Tacos?
awild | April 25, 2008A few of the many species described by Roy Snelling:
Myrmecocystus tenuinodis Snelling 1976
Stenamma dyscheres Snelling 1973
Neivamyrmex wilsoni Snelling & Snelling 2007
awild | April 24, 2008
Eusattus dilatatus - dune darkling beetle (Tenebrionidae)
California, USA
Sand dunes are an unusual habitat, and the creatures found on them are equally odd. One of the more charismatic dune endemics is Eusattus dilatatus, a large darkling beetle found in southern California. This scavenging insect has long legs for digging and a waxy cuticle to prevent dessication.
Eusattus is not the easiest photographic subject. It seemed uncomfortable out in the open and would burrow as soon as I placed it on the sand. The series below spans 30 seconds.
**update** Tenebrionid expert Kojun Kanda…
awild | April 23, 2008Yesterday I received the sad news that Roy Snelling, one of the most significant figures in modern myrmecology, has passed on. He was on an expedition in Kenya and apparently suffered a heart attack in his sleep.
Roy's prolific career as a curator at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County produced dozens of studies on the taxonomy of bees, wasps, and especially ants. Among other accomplishments, his works are the primary reference for the honeypot ants of North America, numerous groups of carpenter ants, and the entire Chilean myrmecofauna. Roy was a devoted desert rat, an…
awild | April 22, 2008
Proceratium californicum
San Mateo Co., California
From Antweb:
This rarely collected ant is known from valley oak (Quercus lobata) riparian woodland in the Central Valley and from adjacent foothill localities (oak woodland; chaparral; grassland). It is presumed to be a specialist, subterranean predator on spider eggs. Alates have been collected in April and May.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
f/13, 1/200 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | April 21, 2008
Areolate
In 1979, Rick Harris wrote a definitive paper illustrating the various terms used by taxonomists to describe the intricate patterns on the insect exoskeleton. His guide is tremendously helpful to those of us who struggle to decide if those ridges on the head of an ant are strigate or costate. Via Sifolinia, I now see that Harris's illustrations are available online:
A Glossary of Surface Sculpturing
Incidentally, Rick was the guy who taught me how to use a Scanning Electron Microscope, although at this point it'd be a minor miracle if I remembered any of it.
awild | April 20, 2008
Velvet ants- which aren't really ants at all- are wingless wasps that parasitize ground-nesting bees. They are attractive insects, bearing bright colors and cute frizzy hair. But in case you are ever tempted to pick up one of those cuddly-looking little guys, let the photo above serve as a reminder about what lies at the tail end: an unusually long, flexible stinger. As you can see, the wasp is capable of swinging it back over her shoulder, with perfect aim, to zing the forceps. The venom is potent, and in some parts of the U.S. these insects are called "Cow-Killers". As is always the…
awild | April 18, 2008Ben Stein's propaganda flick Expelled comes out today. Since other people have hashed the film to death, I won't write about Expelled except to make the following observation.
This is a graph showing the number of technical publications indexed in PubMed under the search terms "evolution" and "intelligent design". I threw in a third search term, "biochemistry", just to give a sense of how evolution sits relative to another large research field. Basically, the graph measures the productivity of a field in terms of scientific publications. In 2007, scientists produced 17 technical…
awild | April 18, 2008
Araeoschizus sp. Ant Beetle (Tenebrionidae)
California
Araeoschizus is a small genus of darkling beetle that both resembles ants and lives close to ant nests. It occurs in the arid western regions of North America. Not much is known about the nature of the association of these beetles with the ants, but they may subsist on the refuse of harvester ant colonies.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
Beetles collected by Kojun Kanda.
awild | April 17, 2008
While googling about for the latest CD by the Rustic Overtones (Light at the End), I discovered that copies of Shish Boom Bam are now selling for as high as $350. Shish is the crappy old recording from 1994 when I used to play trumpet with the band, back when R.O. were all rosy-cheeked teenagers. Apparently the green jewel case is something of a collector's item. Now I can't even remember where I've put my single remaining copy.
awild | April 17, 2008Christopher Taylor gives an update on imminent closure of the Utrecht Herbarium, as well as further explanation why this is very, very bad.
awild | April 15, 2008
Forelius mccooki (small ants) & Pogonomyrmex desertorum
Tucson, Arizona
In last August's National Geographic, photographer Mark Moffett has a controversial photo essay depicting a large, motionless harvester ant being worked over by smaller Dorymyrmex workers. Moffett's interpretation of the behavior is this:
While observing seed-harvester ants on the desert flats west of Portal, Arizona, I noticed workers would approach a nest of a tiny, unnamed species of the genus Dorymyrmex. A harvester would rise up on her legs with abdomen lifted and jaws agape, seemingly frozen in place. Soon…
awild | April 14, 2008
Daceton boltoni Azorsa & Sosa-Calvo 2008
Iquitos, Peru
If I had to make a list of the most beautiful ants in the world, the honey-colored trap-jaw ant Daceton armigerum would be near the top. Daceton is an unmistakable insect: large, graceful, spiny, with bulging eyes and a heart-shaped head. They live in the canopy of Amazonian rain forests and, like several other canopy ants, are able to glide back to a tree trunk if dislodged from their foraging trails. As the impressive jaws suggest, these ants are largely predatory.
Daceton has been known to myrmecologists by a single species, D…
awild | April 14, 2008
I can't imagine a more unpleasant way to go. This poor oleander aphid (Aphis nerii) has its innards sucked out by a hoverfly larva.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
MT-24EX flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop.
awild | April 13, 2008
The Argentine Ant (Linepithema humile), a small brown ant about 2-3mm long, is one of the world's most damaging insects. This pernicious ant is spreading to warmer regions around the world from its natal habitat along South America's Paraná River. Linepithema humile can drive native arthropods to extinction, instigating changes that ripple through ecosystems. In California, horned lizard populations plummet. In South Africa, plant reproduction is disrupted. Worldwide, the Argentine ant is a persistent house and crop pest. This is not a good ant.
My Ph.D. dissertation, completed a few…