ants
sb admin | April 19, 2009Compare these two images, both of the same swarm of mating ants:
What's the difference?
The lighting, of course. In the first image I stood facing the rising sun so that the insects' translucent wings glowed, while in the second I moved to shoot the swarm from another angle, the sun hitting them from the side. A much plainer result, to my eye.
Managing light is the most important aspect of photographic composition. Entire books (as well as some fantastic blogs) have been written on the subject. I can't compete with that level of detail in a short blog post, so let me instead distill the…
awild | April 18, 2009
Mycocepurus smithii: an ant without males?
An image I took a couple years ago at UT Austin is featured today in Nat Geo's "Photo in the News". This laboratory nest was one of the colonies screened in Anna Himler's study to determine that the species is parthenogenetic.
One correction to the Nat Geo article. Mycocepurus are not leafcutter ants themselves but part of an earlier radiation of fungus-growers.
awild | April 16, 2009I never met Carl Rettenmeyer.
I regret this.  Rettenmeyer forms a part of my heritage as an ant photographer.  As a kid, my first exposure to army ants came through Rettenmeyer's stunning imagery in Ranger Rick magazine. His photos adorn the pages of E. O. Wilson's 1971 classic The Insect Societies as well as the later tome The Ants.  Before I ever picked up a camera, or even considered myrmecology as a career, Rettenmeyer's ants were well seared into my memory.  They still simmer there, forming a mental backdrop for thoughts of army ants.
So as a tribute of sorts, I've…
sb admin | April 16, 2009
An Amblyopone oregonensis huntress delivers a paralyzing dose of venom to a centipede. This lets the ant larvae consume it alive later, at their leisure. Ow. Ow, Ow. Yes, that is the stinger you see, sunk deep into the head.
A cricket is impaled on the mandibles of a Malagasy trap-jaw ant, Odontomachus coquereli. That's gotta hurt.
Mantids don't wait for their prey to expire before they tear them to pieces.
An aphid receives the egg of a braconid wasp (Aphidius ervi).
But that's probably better than getting your innards suddenly schlorped out by a syrphid fly larva.
bioephemera | April 15, 2009
If you enjoy bioephemera, you should take a moment to check out Scienceblogs' new blog, Photo Synthesis:
While doing our usual browsing of the blogosphere, we've become aware of the vast number of excellent blogs featuring science imagery, from neural networks captured with a light microscope to images of supernovae billions of light-years away. To take advantage of this wealth of visual content, we've decided to host our favorites here on ScienceBlogs, with a rotating line-up of photobloggers we'll select monthly.
This month, Alex Wild of myrmecos kicks things off with his insect…
awild | April 15, 2009
Messor capensis nests, as seen by The Google
Over at Photo Synthesis, commentator Kate directs our attention to Messor capensis, a South African seed harvester whose nests from the air look like some form of fungal growth. Except much, much bigger. (coordinates here: 33° 36â57.32âS, 22° 08â06.38âE)
I've only got one really crappy photo of the beast, but I'll subject you to it anyway:
More Google Earth ants here and here.
awild | April 14, 2009It is due in large part to Rettenmeyer's tireless tracking of army ants through all manner of tangled tropical jungle, for months on end, that we know as much as we do about those creatures. We've lost a real giant of myrmecology.
sb admin | April 13, 2009Fire ants aren't the only formicids that have to worry about parasitoid phorid flies. Many species are hosts to this diverse fly family.
Below are a pair of photos I took recently near Jujuy, Argentina showing a trio of an unidentified Pseudacteon species hovering over an ant nest. One of the flies hit her target, inserting her ovipositor between the ant's abdominal sclerites.
I don't say this about all my images, but these shots were truly lucky. The flies are much smaller (1mm) and more erratic than the phorids I posted previously. The oviposition itself took a fraction of a second,…
sb admin | April 12, 2009With 12,000 described species, ants dominate global terrestrial ecosystems. Here are a few of them.
Name: Nothomyrmecia macrops
Distribution: Australia
Famous for: The story of its rediscovery (As told by Bill Bryson- scroll down)
Name: Dinoponera australis
Distribution: South America
Famous for: being the largest ant in the western hemisphere
Name: Polyergus sp.
Distribution: North America
Famous for: piracy, taking of prisoners
Name: Dorylus helvolus
Distribution: Africa
Famous for: terrorizing subterranean arthropods, taking of no prisoners
Name: Pogonomyrmex maricopa…
awild | April 11, 2009
Amyrmex: Dolichoderinae? Leptanilloidinae? Who knew?
A paper out this week in Zootaxa reminds us of the hazards of excessive reliance on the worker caste for ant taxonomy. Phil Ward and Seán Brady sequenced DNA from few genes from the enigmatic Amyrmex, a rarely-collected dolichoderine genus known only from males in South America. Except, it wasn't a dolichoderine. Surprise! Genetically, this little guy is part of the doryline section (the army ants and relatives) in the Leptanilloidinae.
Where did we go wrong with Amyrmex? In my opinion, it's in our dysfunctional dependence on…
sb admin | April 10, 2009In Argentina, an ant-decapitating fly (Pseudacteon sp.) attempts to separate a fire ant (Solenopsis sp.) from her nestmates:
More photos- and the story behind them- below.
An ant burdened with prey is the easiest target of all:
The ants aren't defenseless. The classic "run-and-hide" works well enough:
What's the deal with the dreaded Ant-Decapitating Flies? The University of Texas Fire Ant Project explains:
"Female phorid flies are attracted to fire ants swarming over a disturbed mound or foraging along a trail to food. They hover over ants looking for a preferred individual. (Each…
sb admin | April 10, 2009
A screen capture in Google Earth reveals a pattern of pasture freckles in Entre Rios, Argentina.
How about a closer look? I drove past the site last week, and the landscape at ground level sports an array of domed mounds, each about half a meter in height:
And the little engineer behind the mounds?
Camponotus termitarius, the tacurú ant. This perky Argentinian native (often misidentified as C. punctulatus) frequently invades land degraded by agriculture and is an excellent example of how human land-use changes can convert an innocuous local species into a pest. In this case, the…
sb admin | April 9, 2009
Argentine ant (Linepithema humile) worker and queen
Córdoba, Argentina
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | April 9, 2009Sorry to keep harping on Hoelldobler & Wilson's The Superorganism. But Wilson's section on ant evolution is so bad, so out of touch with the state of the field that I can't help but to rant.
Both Chapter 7 (The Rise of the Ants) and Chapter 8 (Ponerine Ants: The Great Radiation) are predicated on the argument that certain groups of poneromorph ants form a clade. In defense of this assumption, Wilson writes (page 322):
...Barry Bolton has recently split Ponerinae into seven subfamilies (Ponerinae, Amblyponinae, Ectatomminae, Heteroponerinae, Paraponerinae, Proceratiinae, and the fossil…
awild | April 8, 2009
...whose arrival is apparently scored with new-age music and accompanied by your choice of beverage. Be warned.
awild | April 2, 2009
Kalathomyrmex emeryi (Forel 1907), Argentina.
In Zootaxa last week, Christiana Klingenberg and Beto Brandão introduced to the world an entirely new genus of fungus-growing ant, Kalathomyrmex. Yet the single species, K. emeryi, is a widespread neotropical insect that has been known for over a century. In fact, I photographed it twice during my recent trip to Argentina. How does this happen, a new genus devoid of novel species?
The answer is understandable in light of the distinct pattern of evolution among the fungus growing ants, revealed in a 2008 study by Ted Schultz and Sean Brady…
awild | April 1, 2009
This afternoon NPR is running an entertaining bit on Ed Wilson's research on how ants identify their deceased nestmates.
Plus, they seem to have made a LOLant out of one of my Odontomachus photos.