entomology
awild | February 22, 2008
Scaphinotus petersi - Snail-Eating Ground Beetle
Arizona
Ground beetles- the family Carabidae- are a spectacular evolutionary radiation of terrestrial predators. The elegant, flightless beetles of the genus Scaphinotus prefer snails and slugs.
photo details. TOP PHOTO. Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/18, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
inside a white box studio, illuminated with indirect flash
BOTTOM PHOTO. Canon MPE-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Twin Flash diffused through tracing paper.
awild | February 20, 2008I'm waiting for my PCR reagents to thaw, so in the meantime here are a few links for your perusal:
The folks at NCSU insect blog make fun of we ant peoples' curatorial habits.
Bug Girl takes on some anti-pheromone paranoia in California.
Carl Zimmer on the awesomeness of cephalopod camouflage.
awild | February 15, 2008
Lutrochus arizonicus - Travertine Beetle
Arizona, USA
Here's an odd sort of beetle of whose existence I was entirely ignorant until a few showed up in our lab. My primary research these days is with the Beetle Tree of Life group, and the travertine beetle is just one of many Coleopteran wonders I've been introduced to over the past couple of years. This one is especially cute.
These little guys are aquatic, clinging to rocks in fast-moving streams. They're rather picky animals and not just any rocks will do. They need a particular kind of limestone called Travertine. The long tarsal…
awild | February 14, 2008The latest edition of the myrmecological newsletter is online here. It may well be the last, according to editor Gordon Snelling:
We have close to 200 members and I can count on two hands the people that have regularly supported Notes by sending in material for publication... I feel like I am banging my head on a wall at times and honestly I am losing the motivation to keep this going.
Notes from Underground has come and gone before. The printed newsletter was inaugurated in 1988 by Harvard…
awild | February 8, 2008
Dineutes sublineatus - whirligig beetle
Arizona, USA
Whirligigs are masters of the thin interface between air and water, predating on animals caught in the surface tension.  In the field it can be hard to appreciate the finely sculptured details of their bodies, the erratic movements that give them their name also make them hard to observe and to catch.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8Â macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/18, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Beetles in a 5-gallon aquarium with a colored posterboard for backdrop.
Off-camera flash bounced off white paper.
Levels adjusted in Photoshop.
awild | February 7, 2008Andy Deans over at the NCSU insect blog surveys the madness of state insects.
Arizona is thankfully immune to the bizarre tendency of states to pick imported species, as if the tens of thousands of naturally-occurring species weren't quite good enough. Ours is the two-tailed swallowtail (photo by Jeffrey Glassberg):
awild | February 6, 2008
Igor Siwanowicz, who shot this series of a fly breaking free of its puparium, is among the finest studio photographers of insects. He's got a particularly sharp eye for lighting and his compositions are often playful. Go visit Igor's portfolio.
awild | February 1, 2008
Onthophagus gazella
Gazelle Scarab, Arizona
At my current rate of once-a-week Beetle Blogging, I'll need 10,000 years to cover every living species.
Wish me luck.
photo details: Beetle attracted to UV light
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
flash diffused through tracing paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop; slight lateral crop
awild | January 31, 2008
We often think of ants as paragons of hard work, but a surprising number of species get by through mooching off the labor of others. Trachymyrmex fungus growers, the larger spiny ants pictured above, do things the old-fashioned way. They dig their own nests, send workers out to gather food, and meticulously cultivate the fungus garden that serves as the primary food source for the colony.
Then, along comes the slim, sneaky Megalomyrmex symmetochus. These little parasites hollow out a cozy little nest within the Trachymyrmex garden and spend their time leisurely consuming the brood of…
zooillogix | January 29, 2008Our recent coverage of the Cracked story "The 5 Most Horrifying Bugs in the World" made reference to the Schmidt Sting Pain Index, something we felt the need to explore further. Apparently Dr. Justin O Schmidt, an entomologist recently retired from the U.S. Department of Agriculture's Tucson Carl Hayden Bee Research Center, felt the need to create a ranking system for insect stings. More specifically Hymenoptera stings, the order of insects that includes bees, wasps, ants and sawflies. Typically the "research" was conducted on himself and frequently required provoking the little guys to…
awild | January 25, 2008
Adranes ant-nest beetle
California
The most exciting finds are often the least expected. I stumbled across this odd little beetle while collecting ants several years ago in northern California. It was tiny, only a few millimeters long, with a little blind nubbin for a head whose sole purpose seemed to be supporting antennae that looked like a pair of cricket bats. The Lasius ants whose nest played host to this strange creature did not appear to pay it any particular attention. Ants are normally rather vicious towards interlopers, so their nonchalance often reveals successful infiltration by…
awild | January 20, 2008So you like insects, but can't be bothered to get up from your computer to go look for some? Google earth to the rescue!
South of Tucson, Arizona (31°38.097'N 111°03.797'W) I found this lovely aerial image. Visualized from an elevation of about a kilometer and a half, it shows a hill just west of I-19 covered in freshly-sprouted grass. Except, there's this strange pattern of evenly-spaced polka-dots:
What could account for the speckles? Alien crop-circles? Bizarre gardening accidents?
Why no, those are the nest discs of one of our most conspicuous insects in the Sonoran desert, the red…
awild | January 17, 2008
Here's a story about a parasitic nematode that turns black ants into ripe red berries. What's this about?
The parasite needs to get its eggs from an infected ant to healthy ants. Apparently it hasn't been successful the old-fashioned way, just broadcasting its eggs about the environment. Instead, these little worms have figured out a far more effective egg delivery vehicle: birds.
Ants of the genus Cephalotes often feed from bird droppings (for instance, see here). If a parasitic egg can get itself into a bird's digestive system, it'll wind up in a juicy fecal pellet where it may be…
awild | December 5, 2007
Bombus impatiens
details: Canon 100mm macro lens on a Canon 20D
bees on plain white paper
f/14, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
Canon 550EX speedlite flash, bounced off white paper
levels adjusted in Photoshop
grrlscientist | September 25, 2007tags: book review, entomology, insects, household pests, Joshua Abarbanel, Jeff Swimmer
I am dismayed to reveal that my apartment is home to uncounted numbers of freeloaders. In fact, every evening, when I turn the lights on, I witness these tiny marauders' mad dash for the cracks in the walls and the space under the refrigerator. I am talking about the East Coast plague: cockroaches. You know; vile, disgusting, nearly ubiquitous bugs. However, I feel much better knowing that everyone's home, regardless of how sterile it is, is occupied by a vast collection of invertebrate roommates. In fact…