Insect Links
awild | February 27, 2008
Meet Ectatomma tuberculatum. This tropical insect has the largest genome of 40 species of ants measured in a study by Neil Tsutsui et al in BioMed Central. Weighing in at 690 megabases, E. tuberculatum has nearly twice as much DNA as most other ant species, leading the authors to suggest that a whole genome duplication occurred somewhere in the line of Ectatommine ancestry.
Tsutsui et al's study, released today, is the first comprehensive genomic survey across ants. What's more, it is open access. You can read the whole thing here:
Evolution of Genome Size in Ants
Summary: Here, we…
awild | February 25, 2008The imminent release of an embryonic Encyclopedia of Life (EoL) has journalists buzzing about an exciting new online resource. I wish I could share their enthusiasm.
EoL has announced 1.7 million species pages within a decade, providing biological information for all of the world's described species. That's a lofty goal, but their plan for getting the content for those pages goes something like this:
Let's build a snappy website, and then the site's awesomeness will spontaneously cause all the biologists in the world to shower us freely with their knowledge.
And maybe they'll buy us a pony…
awild | February 24, 2008
I've got a new series of Dinoponera photographs up at myrmecos.net. Click on the image above to see the gallery.
These giant black insects are the largest South American ants, and although there is at least one Asian Carpenter ant (Camponotus gigas) that's a bit bigger, Dinoponera weighs in as the world's largest stinging ant. They would seem to command a great deal of respect for such distinction, but in reality Dinoponera are rather shy animals.
Because these ants are so large- reaching over an inch long- they open up an array of photographic possibilities that can't easily be done with…
awild | February 22, 2008
The smallest insect I've ever photographed made the cover of the scientific journal Genetics this week. Encarsia pergandiella, an aphelinid wasp not even a millimeter long, was the subject of a study by Perlmann, Kelly, and Hunter documenting the reproductive consequences of infection by bacterial parasite.
The wasp lab is downstairs from ours, so it wasn't much trouble to schlep my equipment over for an afternoon session. The goal was to create a set of images to submit to the journal as potential covers, and I was more than happy to have the opportunity to shoot these charismatic little…
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 19, 2008Â
Does ant activity cycle by an internal clock, or is their activity cycle a response to changing environmental cues?
A study in Insectes Sociaux weighs in on the side of environment. Penick & Tschinkel experimented with applying light and heat from different directions and at different times of day to fire ant mounds. It turns out that the ants' daily rhythm of moving their brood around the nest is a result of temperature tracking. I've pasted a link to the article and the abstract below.
Penick & Tschinkel. 2008. Thermoregulatory brood transport in the fire ant, Solenopsis…
awild | February 18, 2008The rise of microstock photography has many established photographers wringing their hands and gnashing their teeth over how microstock companies are destroying the business.
What is microstock? It is a relatively new internet-based business model that licenses existing images for scandalously low prices. Traditionally, images are licensed through highly selective stock agencies for amounts in the hundreds of dollars or so, but microstock turns everything upside-down, moving images for just pennies each. Microstock companies aren't choosy about the images they peddle, as they need vast…
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 13, 2008
 Formica accreta, Northern California
I wish I could say I knew what these ants were doing. Hiding from the photographer, perhaps? Formica of the fusca species group are notoriously shy insects, but not all of these ones seemed to be equally spooked.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60.
f/13, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
Twin flash diffused through tracing paper.
Levels adjusted in Photoshop.
awild | February 11, 2008
Ant Course 2008 is scheduled for Venezuela this August. The Ant Course, now in its 8th year, gives students an introduction to myrmecology with a decidedly taxonomic focus. More than just an academic exercise, the course serves as a meeting place where newcomers can mingle with an all-star cast of instructors, a superb social networking medium for aspiring ant scientists.
Admission to the Ant Course is competitive, with double the number of applicants than seats. I have been on the admissions committee in past years, and though I can't speak for this year's course I can share what the…
awild | February 9, 2008
In 1934, a diminutive book by an unknown author seeded the largest conservation movement in history. The book, Roger Tory Peterson's A Field Guide to the Birds, pioneered the modern field guide format with crisp illustrations of diagnostic characters, all in a pocket-sized read. The Guide sold out in a week, but the book's effects are ongoing.
To understand the magnitude of Peterson's impact, consider how naturalists traditionally identified birds. They'd take a shotgun into the field, and if they saw something of interest they'd kill it. Birding was necessarily limited to the landed-…
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 3, 2008I have thousands of absolutely awful photographs on my hard drive. I normally delete the screw-ups on camera as soon as they happen, but enough seep through that even after the initial cut they outnumber the good photos by at least 3 to 1. Here are a few of my favorite worst shots.
Thinking that nothing would be cooler than an action shot of a fruit fly in mid-air, I spent an entire evening trying to photograph flies hovering over a rotting banana. This shot is the closest I came to getting anything in focus.
That's a nice finger in the background. It's mine, you know.
Imagine how…
awild | February 3, 2008Circus of the Spineless #29 is now posted at Andrea's Buzzing About. The circus rounds up invertebrate blog posts from the previous month, a great read!
#30 will be at A D.C. Birding Blog at the end of February.
awild | February 1, 2008My early bug photos, the ones I don't show anyone anymore, are poorly-exposed affairs that now sit hidden in my files. If I had to put my finger on the single biggest problem with these embarrassing first attempts, I'd say that I lacked an eye for composition. I was so intent on getting the bug in focus somewhere in the LCD that I paid no attention to what else ended up sharing the frame. Turns out, all sorts of extraneous crud. Bits of grass. Dust. My finger. Many of these images are so crowded that it just isn't clear what I ought to be looking at.
Understanding why busy compositions…
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