ants
awild | June 23, 2008Via GTDA comes this mesmerizing time lapse video demonstrating the efficiency of ant recruitment:
awild | June 22, 2008 A century ago, William Morton Wheeler inked this iconic illustration of the striking polymorphism displayed among members of an ant colony. You may have seen it; Andrew Bourke and Nigel Franks used it as the cover for their 1995 text Social Evolution in Ants.
I always assumed Wheeler's figure depicted some exotic tropical marauder ant, a voracious jungle species with massive soldiers for slicing up hapless prey. I don't read captions carefully enough, I guess, because I learned recently that this charismatic creature is actually a local harvester ant, Pheidole tepicana. Not only that, but…
awild | May 31, 2008
30 years ago, biologists thought they'd solved one of Darwin's thorniest problems, the evolution of sterile social insects:
No doubt many instincts of very difficult explanation could be opposed to the theory of natural selection,âcases, in which we cannot see how an instinct could possibly have originated...I will not here enter on these several cases, but will confine myself to one special difficulty, which at first appeared to me insuperable, and actually fatal to my whole theory. I allude to the neuters or sterile females in insect-communities: for these neuters often differ widely in…
awild | May 28, 2008
Odontomachus coquereli - Madagascar
Myrmecology continues to lead the way in online taxonomy. Today saw the release of the very first taxonomic paper published by the top-tier open access science journal, PLoS One.
Brian Fisher and Alex Smith combine alpha taxonomy with DNA barcoding to produce a revision of the Malagasy trap-jaw ants. The revision includes mitochondrial DNA sequences from some 500 individual ants and resulted in the inference of several new species. I've got plenty to say about DNA barcoding, but I'll leave that for a later post and instead point you to the thoughtful…
awild | May 27, 2008
As if we didn't already have enough pest ants to worry about, here is a relatively new one. The rover ant Brachymyrmex patagonicus, a tiny South American species, has been working its way under the radar across the southern United States. Its presence is now large enough that pest control companies are reporting a sudden increase in requests. According to gardeners I've talked to, these ants emerged in huge numbers here in Tucson about 5 years ago. Given the interest in this species, I thought I'd post a summary of what we know of this emerging pest and how to reliably identify it.…
awild | May 25, 2008
This basic photo of a harvester ant carrying a seed took an hour and a half to capture. 150 exposures. The problem wasn't that the ants weren't behaving, but that it took nearly an hour of experimentation to get the simplicity of composition I had envisioned when I set out on the project.
Few of my better photos are one-off shots.
Most exist in my head in some form or another before I attempt to shoot them, and once I've started a session they take a bit of experimentation before finding the right conditions. Yesterday I headed up towards Mt. Lemmon where I knew of several nests of the…
awild | May 21, 2008Scott Solomon, who researches fungus-growing ants, has a brief piece in Slate Magazine on the Paratrechina Crazy Ants invading Houston.
I'm not convinced that this ant is anything different from Paratrechina fulva, a common South American species and the oldest name in that species complex. People have been calling the Houston invader "P. cf. pubens", but the taxonomy of the genus is so poor that it's difficult to say anything with confidence. Do you folks who've looked at specimens (that's you, James) have any thoughts about the identity of this ant?
awild | May 15, 2008
Opamyrma hungvuong Yamane et al 2008
Vietnam
It isn't every day we get a whole new genus. In this week's Zootaxa, Seiki Yamane, Tuan Vet Bui, and Katsuyuki Eguchi report the discovery of Opamyrma, an amblyoponine ant from central Vietnam. The full article is behind Zootaxa's subscription barrier, but detailed specimen photos are already up at Antweb.
The ant subfamily Amblyoponinae is an ancient group. They diverged from the other ant lineages prior to the evolution of trophallaxis food-sharing behavior, and have instead adopted an odd and seemingly brutal way of passing food around the…
awild | May 14, 2008
I've just received the following notice about an upcoming NOVA show on the life of biologist/myrmecologist E. O. Wilson:
NOVA is excited to partner with organizations that share our passion for scientific discovery as we spread the word about upcoming shows. On Tuesday, May 20, we invite you to join us for a look at the life and work of renowned Harvard entomologist and conservationist E.O. Wilson. From his groundbreaking discoveries about ant culture to his controversial take on the biological basis for human behavior, NOVA presents a sweeping chronicle of Wilson's extraordinary career. In…
awild | May 13, 2008
Pheidole pegasus Sarnat 2008
Fiji
Eli Sarnat, the reigning expert on the Ants of Fiji, has just published a lovely taxonomic revision of a group of Pheidole that occur on the islands. Pheidole are found in warmer regions worldwide, but Fiji has seen a remarkable radiation of species that share a bizarre set of spines on the mesosoma. Eli sorted through hundreds of these things to determine that the group contains seven species, five of which had not previously been described. Pheidole pegasus is largest and among the most distinct of the group. It was collected only once, from the…
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 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 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 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 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…