ants
awild | April 7, 2008
Deserts are difficult places to live for more reasons than just drought and heat. During dry seasons deserts are relatively inactive, and there's not much around for animals to eat. To survive times of dearth, several lineages of desert ants have taken to harvesting plant seeds in the brief periods of bounty that follow rains. If stored properly, grains keep for years and can provide the colony with ample resources during times when the deserts are dry.
This past week the stubby carpet of spring grasses in our normally barren back yard started going to seed. After months of dormancy,…
awild | April 6, 2008
How does a newly speciating ant prevent backcrossing with its parental species? A new study in the journal Evolution by Schwander et al. investigates four hypotheses using the Pogonomyrmex rugosus/barbatus hybrid speciation system, finding support for three of them. Apparently the daughter species maintains its genetic distinctness from a parent species by mating at a different time, mating preferentially with its own species, and by having a much lowered ability to produce viable offspring.
In my opinion, the story of these hybrid harvester ant species is among the most interesting pieces…
awild | April 4, 2008Check out Khaleph's pictures of a Lasius queen killed by a Tachinid fly parasitoid.
awild | April 3, 2008Back in 2002 when I used the Nikon Coolpix 995 for everything, I would occasionally play around with the camera's very basic video mode. The 995 made small, grainy movies without sound, and most of the videos I took are, well, pretty bad. But the camera had impressive macro abilities, which meant it could shoot ants close-in. Here's a movie of a Dinoponera from the Mbaracayú Forest Reserve in Paraguay:
awild | April 2, 2008
Acromyrmex versicolor - the desert leafcutter
Here's the original:
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
MT24-EX twin flash diffused through tracing paper
Photoshop modification (top photo): desaturated yellows
increased contrast, burned edges, and added noise
awild | April 1, 2008
If you watch this video about a new technology for visualizing insect fossils hidden in opaque amber, pay special attention around 0:36-0:44. There's a brief 3D image of what is clearly a well-preserved sphecomyrmine ant. The clip is excerpted from a detailed demonstration here, showing the insect in all its glory (warning: 57MB!). It's among the most detailed glimpses of a Sphecomyrmine yet.
Why is this ant interesting? Sphecomyrminae is in many respects a classic piece of evidence for the wasp ancestry of ants. It is an extinct Cretaceous subfamily that shows a few characteristics of…
awild | April 1, 2008
If you've been paying attention to cinematography or photography the last few years, you'll undoubtedly have noticed the popularity of a particular grainy, desaturated, slightly surrealistic style. This look was popularized in films like 300 and Saving Private Ryan, and has become commonplace in glamour photography and advertisements for everything from perfume to shoes.
Inexplicably, this high-fashion style has yet to penetrate the ever trendy world of Ant Photography. So last night I conducted some ground-breaking photoshop experimentation and created the above image. I'm pleased with…
awild | March 31, 2008via Google Trends. Blue is ants, red is beetles:
Ants win, even in the face of the beetles' 20-fold species advantage.
That seasonal pattern is striking, no?
awild | March 30, 2008
If you've ever spent time photographing ants the above shot will look familiar: off-frame and out of focus. Because ants are small and speedy, they are among the most difficult insects to photograph. Just capturing an active ant somewhere in the frame can be regarded as an achievement, never mind the more aesthetic concerns of lighting and composition. Yet ants are dominant insects nearly everywhere, and photographers who neglect them are missing out on one of our most important animals. Figuring out how to photograph these tricky insects is well worth the effort. If you can shoot ants,…
awild | March 29, 2008Last year I mentioned the antics of Mr. Dewanand Makhan, an amateur taxonomist whose enthusiasm for publication rather outstrips any penchant for quality control. This week a team of myrmecologists has stepped in to reverse some of Makhan's errors:
All that [Makhan] has done is sample some of Surinameâs common species of Dacetini, and one common species of Basicerotini, and describe them all as new, without checking if any of them already had identities. His motives for writing this paper cannot be imagined and the total lack of investigation of previous endeavour defies understanding.…
awild | March 25, 2008
Mycocepurus smithi, in the fungus garden
An exciting week for ant aficionados! A new study by ant phylogenetics gurus Ted Schultz and Seán Brady provides the first detailed picture of attine evolution. These New World ants have long attracted the attention of biologists because they, like our own species, practice a well-developed form of agriculture. Instead of plants, these ants grow fungi, and their relationship is so specialized that the ants can consume nothing else. Schultz and Brady use data from four nuclear genes, the fossil record, and the biology of extant ants to infer an…
awild | March 23, 2008
Rather than blather on about my Easter Sunday, I'll just share a few images from a morning hike in Tucson's Rincon mountains. Winter rains have given way to wildflowers, and in particular the Encelia brittlebush was spectacular.
Prickly pear:
A hoverfly guards his territory:
Pheidole worker ant gathering nectar from a barrel cactus:
Honeypot ants emerging from their nest:
Close-up of Aphaenogaster cockerelli, a common harvester ant:
awild | March 19, 2008
In our front yard we've got a busy nest of Pogonomyrmex rugosus seed harvesting ants. Warming weather brought them out for the first time last week, and every now and again I go out to see what they're up to. Lots of digging, it seems.
Pogonomyrmex is greek for "Bearded Ant", named 150 years ago by Austrian myrmecologist Gustav Mayr for the thick brush of hairs on the underside of the head. Entomologists affectionately refer to these ubiquitous desert insects as "Pogos". What does the beard do?
It's a construction tool, and one that is especially helpful in dry, sandy climates. As anyone…
awild | March 16, 2008
Pheidole creightoni major worker, California
After reading a couple times through Corrie Moreau's hot-off-the-press Pheidole evolution paper, I am pleased to give it a thumbs-up. The paper is behind a subscription barrier, so I have distilled the results into an informal summary:
Pheidole is one of the most important groups of ants. They are distinctive in always having at least two sharply-defined types of worker ants in the nest: minor workers that just sort of look like normal little ants, and the very front-heavy major workers with an enormous head and powerful jaws. Pheidole is…
awild | March 11, 2008
Myrmecologist and artist Andrea Lucky sent me this picture, depicting her controversial view that Adam Ant was really a Myrmecia.
awild | March 9, 2008
Strumigenys louisianae stalking a springtail
Tucson, Arizona
Non-native species should make a naturalist's skin crawl, but these ornate little trap-jaw ants are a guilty pleasure. Strumigenys louisianae is among the most widespread of the miniature trap-jaw ants, occurring naturally from the southeastern U.S. to northern Argentina. The desert climate in Tucson is too dry for Strumigenys, but they persist in lawns, gardens, and other places in town where irrigation raises the moisture levels. No one knows when or how they arrived, but it is likely the founding colonies stowed away in…
awild | February 29, 2008
Out today is a preprint version (subscription only) of Corrie Moreau's Pheidole phylogeny. At first glance this seems a nice piece of work: the evolutionary history of one of the world's most diverse ant genera inferred from 140 species and 5 genes.
This is some extremely cool ant evolution research, and the first salvo from the nascent Pheidole working group. Once I get a chance to digest all 50+ pages I'll post the highlights.
source: Moreau, C. S. 2008. Unraveling the Evolutionary History of the Hyperdiverse Ant Genus Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and…