ants
awild | December 17, 2008In an earlier post I listed my favorite insect images of the year taken by other photographers. Now it's my turn. Here is the best of my own work over the last 12 months.
Laccophilus pictus, Arizona
Dinoponera australis, Argentina
Parasitic Cotesia wasp attacks a Manduca larva
Polyrhachis schlueteri, South Africa
Crematogaster tricolor, South Africa
Weaver Ant (Oecophylla longinoda), South Africa
Rose Aphids (Macrosiphum rosae), Arizona
Thaumatomyrmex atrox, Venezuela
Simopelta queen and workers, Venezuela
Pheidole obtusospinosa, Arizona
Harpegnathos saltator, India
awild | December 16, 2008This just in: Eli Sarnat's "Pacific Invasive Ants" website is up. It's got something for everyone: fact sheets, videos, keys, links.  Eli's got an eye for design, too, so the site is aesthetically pleasing and easy to navigate.
http://www.lucidcentral.org/keys/v3/PIAkey/index.html
(postscript: yeah, yeah. Pacific Disturbance Specialist Ants. I know.)
awild | December 16, 2008Forelius damiani Guerrero & Fernández 2008
Colombia
The ant genus Forelius - named for the eminent Swiss myrmecologist Auguste Forel- is known for its abundance in hot, dry climates in both North and South America. This affinity for deserts has given the genus a markedly disjunct distribution, abundant in subtropical South America and in the warmer regions of North and Central America but absent in the more humid intervening climes. Or so we'd assumed.
Last week Colombian myrmecologists Roberto Guerrero & Fernando Fernández filled the gap with a newly-discovered species of…
awild | December 14, 2008Remember Martialis heureka? Antweb.org has just posted some new high-res images of the specimen:
awild | December 14, 2008
Neivamyrmex nigrescens, Arizona
Army ants have a decidedly tropical reputation. The term conjures spectacular images of swarms sweeping across remote Amazonian villages, devouring chickens, cows, and small children unlucky enough to find themselves in the path of the ants. Of course, the habits of real army ants are not nearly so sensational, but they are at least as interesting.
The approximate range of army ants in North America.
Few people are aware that more than a dozen army ant species are found in the United States. Most belong to the genus Neivamyrmex, a diverse group that…
awild | December 13, 2008From an interview with E. O. Wilson:
[Q:]Are ants better at anything than humans?
[Wilson:] Human beings have not yet made an accommodation with the rest of lifeâwhereas ants, whose history dates back more than 100 million years, have achieved that balance, mostly by specializing among the 14,000 known species in terms of where they live, what they eat, and how they relate to other species. Each, for the most part, has acquired a balance with prey, food, and space, halting population growth before it crashes. Ants have reached some degree of sustainability, while humans have not. We're not…
awild | December 10, 2008I see that Pachycondyla chinensis, which people are apparently calling "The Asian Needle Ant", is making headlines this week.
I know very little about P. chinensis, but the ant is apparently becoming widespread in the Southeast. Rob Dunn's lab at NCSU researches the species and has put up a page about it. Also, check out Benoit Guenard's P. chinensis photo gallery.
(Incidentally, Rob Dunn has a new book out about biological discovery. It looks excellent. I'll write more about this later, once I get my hands on a copy.)
awild | December 9, 2008
Solenopsis invicta - invasive or just disturbed?
Prevailing wisdom holds that imported fire ants marched across the southern United States on the virtue of their fierce nature and superior competitive ability. The fire ant conquest of the south reads like a tale of bravery and intrigue, but according to Walt Tschinkel and Josh King it is also not true.  They have a must-read study in PNAS this week detailing a tight set of field experiments that turns the conventional wisdom upside-down.
King and Tschinkel disturbed various patches of native Florida pine forest by mowing or plowing,…
awild | December 9, 2008I can't help but feel gleeful at this morning's news.  Back in January I had landed, I thought, a postdoctoral position at the Illinois Natural History Survey. It was a dream job. I've been itching for years to figure out what's really going on with the evolutionary history of Camponotus, a hugely important ant genus with a godawful mess of a taxonomy. The State of Illinois had finally provided the wherewithal, an independent postdoc to do research on a project of my choosing. That would be Camponotus.
So forgive me if I seem petty when I explain that's exactly when Mr. Blagojevich…
awild | December 8, 2008Today we have a guest post by myself, from 25 years ago:
It was my very first ant publication, printed on the back page of a biweekly family newsletter. The ants I later determined to be Lasius flavus, and I am happy to report that the species still abounds at my old haunts in upstate NY despite all my collecting and squishing of queens.
That's me on the right, collecting ants with co-conspirator Steve
awild | December 6, 2008Roberto Keller uses his new blog to explain the acidopore.
Sylvia Cremer et al dissect the evolution of Lasius neglectus supercolonies in PLoS ONE.
Popular reviews of Hoelldobler and Wilson's "The Superorganism" can be found in Slate Magazine and the New York Times. Jon Seal provides a scientist's take in Myrmecological News.
China has executed the man behind an ant-breeding swindle that bankrupted thousands of investors.
Antweb has new images of a Tatuidris worker and male.
awild | December 4, 2008
Amblyopone australis
The correct pronunciation of this ant's name is Am-blee-ah-pon-ee, with the emphasis on the antepenultimate syllable and the final "e" audible. But I don't know anyone who says it that way.
Every English-speaking myrmecologist I know calls it "Am-blee-oh-pohn", with the final "e" silent. That's a shame, because the right way is also prettier. I mentioned this to May Berenbaum- whose office is across the hall from mine- and she pointed out that midwesterners inflict the same error on calzones, which New Yorkers say correctly as "cal-zon-ee."
awild | December 3, 2008
Linepithema flavescens, last seen in 1934
Linepithema flavescens, a small yellow ant from Haiti, is one of the species I re-described as part of my Ph.D. dissertation. All we know about this ant, apart from the brief notes on the specimen labels, is the external appearance of a few workers. Queens and males haven't been collected. No one has studied its ecology or behavior. The few existing museum specimens- gathered from two different field sites- may be too valuable to attempt DNA extraction.
A 1934 collection is the last time anyone has ever seen L. flavescens. As the natural…
awild | November 30, 2008
Let's take a lesson from the Swiss. They deem myrmecologists of such great national importance that one once adorned the face of the country's highest currency. Auguste-Henri Forel and his beloved ants were featured on the 1000 Franc note from 1976 to 1995.
Ponder that for a moment.
A country reknowned for finance. Put an ant man. On their top note. For two decades.
For those interested in more Forel, Antweb has a photo from Forel's extensive collection. Antbase holds Forel's myrmecological publications. And if you're one of those weirdos who finds sex more interesting than…
awild | November 28, 2008
Martineziana dutertrei Fire Ant Beetle
Texas
Any insect that can fool an ant nest's security system gains access to rich stores of food. Martineziana scarab beetles are found only in colonies of Solenopsis fire ants where they feed on the ants and their brood. This beetle was collected from a red imported fire ant mound at the Brackenridge Field Laboratory in Austin, Texas.
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 24, 2008Last week the Howard Hughes Medical Institute announced that they will be funding Danny Reinberg, Shelley Berger, and Juergen Liebig to sequence three ant genomes. Their interest is research on aging, hoping that solving the puzzle of why genetically identical ant nestmates can either live for a year as a worker or twenty as a queen will unlock some clues to aging in our own species.  I think that's a stretch, but whatever. We myrmecologists will be able to probe the ant genomes for plenty of other worthwhile reasons.
Three species were chosen to represent varying levels of caste…
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 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…