ants
awild | October 16, 2009In the past week:
Solenopsis invicta reaches Missouri
Wasmannia auropunctata reported on Maui
awild | October 7, 2009
One of the oddest results from the Ant Tree of Life phylogeny was the recovery of a close relationship between Monomorium and Myrmicaria, two rather different looking ants.
But it all seems a little more plausible when looking at the Monomorium infuscum specimen recently uploaded to antweb. I know this is just a gut impression, but still. If M. infuscum sprouted spines and lost a few antennal segments it'd be most of the way there.
awild | September 30, 2009
Tandem running in Camponotus consobrinus - photo by Steve Shattuck
I discovered while googling about this morning that Australian ant guru Steve Shattuck has been uploading some very nice photos to flickr. Â With any luck we'll be seeing some of these in a new incarnation of the Australian Ants book.
awild | September 28, 2009Compare:
Lasius claviger at f/3.5
Lasius claviger at f/13
I wouldn't say that either image is better. The first is dreamier, more abstract, more interpretive. The second is crisp and illustrative. Quite a difference for a small tweaking of camera settings!
Most of my insect photography falls in the small-aperture realm of the second image, but on reflection I probably ought to play around more with images like the first one.
awild | September 26, 2009A: Check your house for any signs of ant-art. If, for instance, your garage sports a giant blue Azteca, you might have developed a myrmecological fixation.
On the other hand, if you consider yourself an ant-lover but lack any obvious ant adornments, you're falling behind. Pick up some paint and get to work!
(This garage belongs to myrmecologists Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer, who sent in the picture. Thanks guys!)
edyong | September 26, 2009This article is reposted from the old Wordpress incarnation of Not Exactly Rocket Science. The blog is on holiday until the start of October, when I'll return with fresh material.
In your garden, there's a fair chance that a farmer is currently tranquilising her livestock with a chemical cocktail she secretes from her feet. Don't believe me? Look closer...
Humans aren't the only species that farms other animals for food - ants do it too and their herds consist of aphids. They feed on plant sap and excrete a sweet and nutritious liquid called honeydew, which the ants drink.
In…
awild | September 23, 2009While in Florida earlier this year I turned over a leaf to find this gruesome scene:
A worker of the Florida Carpenter Ant (Camponotus floridanus) stationed along a leaf vein among a herd of scale insects. Except, without a head.
I honestly don't know what happened to the poor ant. Any ideas?
awild | September 17, 2009Marek Borowiec writes in this morning with a request for ant specimens from the subfamily Cerapachyinae:
Dear Colleagues,
I am currently working on the ant subfamily Cerapachyinae. I plan to work on both alpha-taxonomy as well as phylogeny of these ants. In the course of my study I will need as much material as possible.
In addition to the traits already looked upon by other researchers, I want to explore as many new characters as possible, and so I plan to take a close look at both adults and immatures, the structure of metapleural, metatibial and metatarsal glands, sting apparatus,…
awild | September 15, 2009
Aphaenogaster tennesseensis ants and Entylia treehoppers
Cameras do not see the world the same way as do human eyes. Sometimes extra technological trickery is needed to make a scene appear as real in a photograph as it does in life. The above image is one of those cases.
I found these ants beautifully silhouetted on a sun-soaked leaf next to a lake in southern Illinois. But, the shade under the leaf was strong enough to require long shutter speeds for proper exposure. That made the moving ants blurry. The solution was to hold a flash behind the leaf to augment the natural…
awild | September 14, 2009Photographed this weekend in Dixon Springs, Illinois:
These Aphaenogaster lamellidens foragers have discovered a live centipede and are attempting to pull it from its burrow.
photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/11-f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | September 13, 2009
Proceratium silaceum, alate queen.
Last week at the Vermillion River Observatory I collected this alate queen of Proceratium silaceum, an odd and highly specialized subterranean predator of spider eggs. Once I finished photographing the ant I pickled it in 100% ethanol. The specimen should be in good shape for DNA work.
As Proceratium is both relatively uncommon and phylogenetically interesting, I thought I'd offer the specimen to any lab that might have use for it. Contact me if you're interested.
awild | September 10, 2009
Propodilobus pingorum
It's been nearly three weeks since the last new myrmicine ant genus was announced. An eternity, it seems. I've been going through novel-myrmicine-ant-withdrawal after a spate of descriptions earlier this year. Where will we be able to satisfy our craving for new and difficult to distinguish myrmicines?
Zootaxa, of course. This week Michael Branstetter gives us Propodilobus, a monotypic myrmicine that had been placed in the existing genus Stenamma.
Branstetter's paper is basically a detailed genetic and morphological study intended to better define Stenamma, a…
awild | September 10, 2009
I nominate Polyergus for the worst common name among ants: Amazon Ants. I'm cranky this morning and for some reason this has been irking me.
I now know they were named for their habit of raiding other ant nests, but I spent much of my childhood thinking they were some exotic tropical creature found in places like the...um...Amazon. I never thought to look for Polyergus locally. I was rather confused when, at age 12, I happened on a raid in upstate New York.
As it turns out, this is a common holarctic genus. Polyergus doesn't get anywhere near the real Amazon- it is more at home on…
awild | September 9, 2009
Multiple foundress queens of Acromyrmex versicolor atop their shared fungus garden.
A striking result from recent studies on the co-evolution of leafcutter ants and their fungus is that the two lineages do not show a tight pattern of coevolution. That is, the evolutionary relationships among the fungal lines often deviate from the phylogenetic trees shown by the ants. When ant populations speciate, the fungus doesn't follow.
The lack of cospeciation was puzzling, as the ants and the fungus are intertwined a tight ecological relationship. Each requires the other to survive. The…
awild | September 8, 2009
Crematogaster lineolata queen with a retinue of workers. (Vermillion River Observatory, Illinois)
This weekend we took a trip with some entomology students to the Vermillion River Observatory. The astronomical function of the observatory has long been abandoned, but the site remains as a lovely nature reserve and one of the closest patches of decent forest habitat to where we live in Champaign-Urbana.
The acrobat ant Crematogaster lineolata was one of many ants we encountered, and in this nest the queen was right up near the surface. She lingered long enough for me to get a few shots…
awild | September 7, 2009Long live Myrmecos.net!
By way of a replacement, the ant photos are now over at alexanderwild.com:
Advantages of the new site include:
Galleries can be viewed as a slide show
Geo data are integrated with Google Maps (I'm still working on this)
Images can be displayed at a larger size (up to 800 pixels)
RSS feeds (for example: new photos)
Smoother navigation
Searches return relevant thumbnail images
Automated commercial licensing
Automated ordering of prints
Images and galleries allow comments
As in the old site, the ant images are accessible by taxonomic list, by natural history, by…