ants
awild | January 4, 2008
In the comments, James Trager brings to our attention his recent synonymy of the venerable Formica nitidiventris with Formica pallidefulva. This is one of the most common ants, and in my opinion one of the prettiest, in eastern North America. Many of us from the east learned of this ubiquitous species incorrectly as F. nitidiventris, so the synonymy may take some getting used to. In any case, the name nitidiventris is sunk, so you'll only make yourself look obsolete if you persist in using it.
The Trager et al (2007) revision of the Formica pallidefulva group is excellent, by the way.…
awild | January 1, 2008Apparently, there are people on the internet willing to pay you to not kill the ants in your yard. The site "Adopt an Ant" explains:
Well my name is Tony and I have recently moved into my new home.
After moving in I have seen there is a large ants nest at the bottom of my garden. In this ants nest there are 1 million ants living there.
All the ants are happy go lucky ants with there own Unique personality,
The problem is the plan was to flag my back garden and this would destroy the nest and all the ants.
To save these Ants from DEATH please adopt an ant TODAY.
the money raised…
awild | December 31, 2007
This week the blogosphere is busy recapping 2007 with lists of top stories in politics, news, and celebrity haircuts. In all the hoopla surrounding year's end, somehow everyone seems to have forgotten the ants, even though the, um, fast-paced world of Myrmecology has made plenty of discoveries this year. In no particular order, here is my list of the most significant advances in Ant Science from 2007.
Argentine ants and Fire ants- two of the world's worst invasive species- keep each other in check in their common native range. The perennial mystery of invasive ants is why they are so…
awild | December 29, 2007Photos posted to myrmecos.net rarely go straight from the camera to the web. Through some combination of errors related to exposure and the innate properties of digital sensors, raw images can be a surprisingly poor match to what is seen through the viewfinder. Raw images are often relatively flat in appearance, with colors that are shifted or off-hue. For instance, Canon cameras by default impart a warm reddish hue to their files that is especially apparent in macrophotography. The nice thing about raw files, and indeed the main reason for using them, is that they are malleable enough to…
awild | December 23, 2007
Paraguay may be the world's most important country. Never mind that it is economically isolated and geopolitically forgettable. Rather, I measure importance by less trivial metrics, and by that of course I mean ants.
Paraguayan ants have changed the world. Many of the world's worst pest species evolved on the broad plains of the Paraná river before hitchhiking with human commerce to points abroad. The infamous fire ants in the southern U.S. originated on the Paraná, as did the Argentine Ants that plague California and Europe, along with a rogue's gallery of other trampy and invasive…
awild | December 21, 2007...reviewed by Phil Ward here:
Ward, P.S. 2007. Phylogeny, classification, and species-level taxonomy of ants (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 1668: 549-563.
Abstract: The current state of ant systematics is reviewed. In recent years substantial progress has been made in identifying the major clades of ants and the relationships among them. Earlier inferences about ant phylogeny based on morphology have been refined and modified as a result of a recent influx of molecular (DNA sequence) data and new fossil discoveries. It is now apparent that much of the biological and taxonomic diversity…
awild | December 20, 2007
Trachymyrmex pomonae Rabeling & Cover 2007
Arizona
Nothing warms the heart more than a new ant species close to home! An all-star team of ant specialists, headed by Christian Rabeling at the University of Texas, describe the Arizonan species Trachymyrmex pomonae in Zootaxa this week. This spiny little red insect is part of a New World evolutionary radiation of agricultural ants, the attines, that cultivate a fungus in underground chambers. Trachymyrmex pomonae is one of several Trachymyrmex species in the United States, with dozens more occurring in Central and South America.
New…
awild | December 17, 2007An image search for one of my favorite ants, the Atta leafcutters, returns a jarring juxtaposition of terrorists and ants:
Google Search: "Atta"
awild | December 15, 2007
Leafcutter ants are the most conspicuous insects in Central and South America. Every photographer who happens across their bustling trails seems to take pictures of them. The world really does not need any more photos of leafcutter ants, but I can't help myself. They're pretty. My latest attine indulgences can be viewed here:
New Photos at Myrmecos.net
awild | December 13, 2007Warning: long ranty post to follow.
Taxonomy is an unusual discipline in the balance it strikes between legal and scientific concepts. There's the obvious biology bit about discovering and defining taxa, but unlike any other science there's a backbone of legalistic code that regulates the dynamics of names. If you're the sort who really digs dry legal documents, you can read the zoological code here and the botanical code here. The codes are largely concerned with nomenclature, dealing with issues such as the proper hierarchy of ranks, and resolving conflict among competing names. For…
awild | December 13, 2007In an earlier post about flash diffusion, I wrote about camera flash being a necessity of the trade-off between depth of field and shutter speed. Most insect photographers- myself included- work hard to improve the depth of field in our photographs, trying to bring as much of our diminutive subjects into focus as possible. This means we use a lot of flash.
However, that's not the only way to take insect photos. If one is happy to throw depth of field to the wind, one can dispense with the need for flash and produce photos from the ambient light. The effect is dramatic. One doesn't get…
awild | December 12, 2007
Technomyrmex fisheri Bolton 2007
Madagascar, line drawing by Barry Bolton
Last month, British myrmecologist Barry Bolton published the first ever global synthesis of the ant genus Technomyrmex. The tome describes 37 new species, including Technomyrmex fisheri from Madagascar, named after Brian Fisher of Antweb. I'm always keen to try out new taxonomic keys, so I tested Bolton's out on several unidentified African and Australian species in my collection. As is nearly always the case with Bolton's meticulous work, the key worked flawlessly. I only wish I had more Technomyrmex to key.…
awild | December 6, 2007Zut alors! This blog seems to have developed a following of Frenchmen. The shame of it is, I studied French for 5 years in High School and don't remember a word of it.
The French ant-enthusiast forum Acideformik looks like a fine place to hang out on the intra-webs. Most online myrmecology forums are populated by 12 year-olds relating their experiences fighting red and black ants, or trying to trade in their allowance to import a colony of exotic bulldog ants (to kick the butts of both red and black ants, I gather). However, the French are over there having book discussions and…
awild | December 2, 2007
Mystrium maren Bihn & Verhaagh 2007
Discoveries of new species on our little-known planet continue apace. The two known specimens of the impressively toothy Mystrium maren were collected in 2001 in Indonesia, and Jochen Bihn and Manfred Verhaagh just published a paper in Zootaxa describing this ant and another new species, M.leonie.
Source: J. H. Bihn & M. Verhaagh, 2007. A review of the genus Mystrium (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) in the Indo-Australian region. Zootaxa 1642: 1-12.
*update* Lead author Jochen Bihn writes about the…
awild | December 1, 2007PZ Myers gives an excellent holiday gift suggestion for aspiring scientists: a microscope.
To fully appreciate the small animals around us, they must be visualized on their own scale. For the uninitiated, the first glance of live insects through a microscope can be shocking. My favorite description comes from myrmecologist Deby Cassill, recalling her introduction to fire ants:
"Unexpectedly, a whole new world exploded into view. It was as though I had been yanked off the stool, sucked through the scope, and plunked smack-dab in the middle of a city teeming with the most beautiful glass-…
awild | November 30, 2007
If I had to pick a favorite myrmicine ant, I'd go with the heavily armored Neotropical genus Cephalotes. These arboreal ants are typically thought of as rainforest canopy dwellers, but we have a desert species here in Arizona, Cephalotes rohweri, that is the northernmost species in an otherwise tropical genus. They nest in abandoned beetle burrows in the dead wood of living Palo Verde trees.
Earlier this month, myrmecologist Scott Powell was in town to scope out a potential research project on our local populations. Scott has been studying how the nesting ecology of these ants…
zooillogix | July 13, 2007Late last month the Genesis II Pathfinder spacecraft was delivered into orbit and along with it went a bold group of unwitting arthropods. Bigelow Aerospace was founded in 1999 with the vision of creating orbital hotels for "space tourists." In an equally lucrative move, this Space Camp for bugs was conceived by Robert Bigelow, the company's founder and namesake, while on vacation.
In the middle of last year, he called his payload team into a room and showed them five dirt-filled containers. Inside each one was an entire colony of ants that he had coaxed, prodded and pried from the ground…
zooillogix | June 6, 2007Army-ants storm through the jungles of Panama a million strong devouring any and every living creature in their path. Some clever birds have found a way to capitalize on the mayhem: Stay close to the ants and eat the leaping, running, and scampering insects that attempt to escape.
Who would want to escape from this love fest?
Antbirds and ovenbirds, the main ant-following species, have different strategies for using the ants to their advantages. Some birds only follow the ants within their own territories, but stop when they reach the borders. Others dabble in ant following, hitting them up…
zooillogix | April 26, 2007Researchers in Florida poured a liquid plaster-metal mixture into the nests of the Florida harvester ant. The resulting casts display astonishing intricacy and depth. One interesting discovery was that the top heavy nature of the chambers reflects age distribution within the any colony and not necessarily earlier digging. Younger ants tend to dig within the bottom 2/3rds of the nest while older ants dig in the top 1/3rd, eventually graduating to harvesting outside of the nest. The highest concentration of ants, therefore, is in the top of the nests, resulting in more chambers.Although this…