awild | February 10, 2008I know this is utterly off-topic for a bug blog, but Human Tetris is so strangely fascinating that I have to share:
awild | February 9, 2008
In 1934, a diminutive book by an unknown author seeded the largest conservation movement in history. The book, Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds, pioneered the modern field guide format with crisp illustrations of diagnostic characters, all in a pocket-sized read. The Guide sold out in a week, but the book's effects are ongoing.
To understand the magnitude of Peterson's impact, consider how naturalists traditionally identified birds. They'd take a shotgun into the field, and if they saw something of interest they'd kill it. Birding was necessarily limited to the landed-…
awild | February 8, 2008
Dineutes sublineatus - whirligig beetle
Arizona, USA
Whirligigs are masters of the thin interface between air and water, predating on animals caught in the surface tension.  In the field it can be hard to appreciate the finely sculptured details of their bodies, the erratic movements that give them their name also make them hard to observe and to catch.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8Â macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/18, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Beetles in a 5-gallon aquarium with a colored posterboard for backdrop.
Off-camera flash bounced off white paper.
Levels adjusted in Photoshop.
awild | February 7, 2008Andy Deans over at the NCSU insect blog surveys the madness of state insects.
Arizona is thankfully immune to the bizarre tendency of states to pick imported species, as if the tens of thousands of naturally-occurring species weren't quite good enough. Ours is the two-tailed swallowtail (photo by Jeffrey Glassberg):
awild | February 6, 2008
Igor Siwanowicz, who shot this series of a fly breaking free of its puparium, is among the finest studio photographers of insects. He's got a particularly sharp eye for lighting and his compositions are often playful. Go visit Igor's portfolio.
awild | February 3, 2008I have thousands of absolutely awful photographs on my hard drive. I normally delete the screw-ups on camera as soon as they happen, but enough seep through that even after the initial cut they outnumber the good photos by at least 3 to 1. Here are a few of my favorite worst shots.
Thinking that nothing would be cooler than an action shot of a fruit fly in mid-air, I spent an entire evening trying to photograph flies hovering over a rotting banana. This shot is the closest I came to getting anything in focus.
That's a nice finger in the background. It's mine, you know.
Imagine how…
awild | February 3, 2008Circus of the Spineless #29 is now posted at Andrea's Buzzing About. The circus rounds up invertebrate blog posts from the previous month, a great read!
#30 will be at A D.C. Birding Blog at the end of February.
awild | February 1, 2008My early bug photos, the ones I don't show anyone anymore, are poorly-exposed affairs that now sit hidden in my files. If I had to put my finger on the single biggest problem with these embarrassing first attempts, I'd say that I lacked an eye for composition. I was so intent on getting the bug in focus somewhere in the LCD that I paid no attention to what else ended up sharing the frame. Turns out, all sorts of extraneous crud. Bits of grass. Dust. My finger. Many of these images are so crowded that it just isn't clear what I ought to be looking at.
Understanding why busy compositions…
awild | February 1, 2008
Onthophagus gazella
Gazelle Scarab, Arizona
At my current rate of once-a-week Beetle Blogging, I'll need 10,000 years to cover every living species.
Wish me luck.
photo details: Beetle attracted to UV light
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop; slight lateral crop
awild | January 31, 2008
Lordomyrma vanua Lucky & Sarnat 2008
Fiji
image by A. Lucky & E. Sarnat
Last week's Zootaxa contained a excellent short paper by Andrea Lucky and Eli Sarnat describing a pair of new Lordomyrma species, including the beautiful L. vanua pictured above. As is true of most insects, Lordomyrma vanua remains a largely unknown quantity. It has been collected just twice, both times from the island of Vanua, in Fiji, for which it is named.
Source: Lucky, A. & E. M. Sarnat. 2008. New species of Lordomyrma (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Southeast Asia and Fiji. Zootaxa 1681: 37-46.
awild | January 31, 2008
We often think of ants as paragons of hard work, but a surprising number of species get by through mooching off the labor of others. Trachymyrmex fungus growers, the larger spiny ants pictured above, do things the old-fashioned way. They dig their own nests, send workers out to gather food, and meticulously cultivate the fungus garden that serves as the primary food source for the colony.
Then, along comes the slim, sneaky Megalomyrmex symmetochus. These little parasites hollow out a cozy little nest within the Trachymyrmex garden and spend their time leisurely consuming the brood of…
awild | January 29, 2008My lovely wife Jo-anne has been in South America the last couple weeks doing field research on Argentine ants while I tend the home fires here in Tucson. I hope she finds it in her to forgive me for the post I am about to write.
Earlier today I got an email explaining why I'm not getting my much-awaited phone call:
I'd call but there aren't any phones at this locutorio and we're on our way out to look for social spiders."
Excuse me? Social spiders? More important than me, your needy hubby?
Ok, I grant that social spiders are pretty cool, if a bit creepy. I remember those things from when…
awild | January 28, 2008Last week I performed my semi-annual copyright registration ritual, and in the middle of the paperwork it occurred to me that this might make an absolutely scintillating blog post. So, here's why copyright registration is important, and here's how to do it.
U.S. law is generous towards photographers. Photographs are automatically copyrighted as soon as they are taken. It doesn't matter if you're taking happy snaps of your pet cat or professionally shooting a Hollywood premiere- you have the copyright.
What does having a copyright do for you? Not very much, it turns out. If you'd like…
awild | January 26, 2008Finally, a solid taxonomy for the Australian Aphaenogaster:
Â
Shattuck, S. 2008. Australian ants of the genus Aphaenogaster (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 1677: 25-25.
ABSTRACT: The Australian species of the myrmicine ant genus Aphaenogaster Mayr are revised. Eight species are recognised, four of which are described as new. The species include barbara sp. n., barbigula Wheeler (for which a lectotype is designated), kimberleyensis sp. n., longiceps (Smith) (with its newly recognised synonym, flava Emery), mediterrae sp. n., poultoni Crawley, pythia Forel (for which a neotype is designated…
awild | January 25, 2008
Adranes ant-nest beetle
California
The most exciting finds are often the least expected. I stumbled across this odd little beetle while collecting ants several years ago in northern California. It was tiny, only a few millimeters long, with a little blind nubbin for a head whose sole purpose seemed to be supporting antennae that looked like a pair of cricket bats. The Lasius ants whose nest played host to this strange creature did not appear to pay it any particular attention. Ants are normally rather vicious towards interlopers, so their nonchalance often reveals successful infiltration by…
awild | January 23, 2008
Nilio species, Tenebrionidae
Gamboa, Panama
I thought this was a chrysomelid leaf beetle for the first few minutes of the photo shoot. It's got such a nice round leaf-beetle shape. Not to mention the bright leaf beetle colors.
But no. The arrangement of the tarsi (5-5-4) and the short, 11-segmented antennae give away its true tenebrionid nature. I'd never seen anything like it.
Tenebrionidae are the darkling beetles, most species have rather drab coloration and a more elongate body form. My labmate Kojun, who helpfully identifies the tenebrionids over at bugguide.net, recognized this…
awild | January 22, 2008New links for the sidebar:
Catalogue of Organisms - Christopher Taylor somehow has time to both complete a Ph.D. in spider systematics AND blog prolifically about all matters invertebrate and taxonomic. I like it because Taylor is a gifted writer and his blog is a fine read. Plus, I have a soft spot for Australians.
Getting Things Done in Academia - Myrmecologist extraordinaire Mike Kaspari bares all about how to thrive as a young scientist. Some of his more serious advice seems to involve beer consumption, so take it with a grain of salt (and some lime).
The Strobist - The brain is the…
awild | January 21, 2008For your viewing pleasure I've set up a new Hemiptera gallery at www.alexanderwild.com. Hemiptera are the "True Bugs", a large order of insects defined by having the mouthparts modified into a hollow beak. You can visit the gallery here:
Bountiful Bugs Photo Gallery!
I admit being a little embarrassed at how few photographs I have of true bugs. They are a stunningly diverse order of insects, with a great many attractive species, and are extremely important both economically and ecologically.
awild | January 20, 2008So you like insects, but can't be bothered to get up from your computer to go look for some? Google earth to the rescue!
South of Tucson, Arizona (31°38.097'N 111°03.797'W) I found this lovely aerial image. Visualized from an elevation of about a kilometer and a half, it shows a hill just west of I-19 covered in freshly-sprouted grass. Except, there's this strange pattern of evenly-spaced polka-dots:
What could account for the speckles? Alien crop-circles? Bizarre gardening accidents?
Why no, those are the nest discs of one of our most conspicuous insects in the Sonoran desert, the red…