common names
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…
sb admin | May 5, 2009A few days ago I noticed the search term "Malagasy Mystery Ant" showing up in the stats for my other blog. This puzzled me, as it wasn't a phrase I was familiar with. So I googled it.
All mentions of the term trace back to a caption in the New York Times slide show from last week. Goodness. I- your humble blogger- had coined it myself, in a haze of deadline fever while submitting images for the slide show. And then, apparently, I forgot all about it.
Mystrium oberthueri
Am I going senile already? I hope not.
The problem with insects is their sheer number. There are millions of…