Insect Links
awild | October 21, 2008
Argentine ants tending scale insects
Three years after finishing my Ph.D., I have finally published the last bit of work from my dissertation. It's a multi-locus molecular phylogeny of the ant genus Linepithema, a group of mostly obscure Neotropical ants that would be overlooked if they didn't happen to contain the infamous Argentine Ant. In less jargony language, what I've done is reconstruct the evolution of an ant genus using genetic data. Here's the citation:
Wild, A. L. 2008. Evolution of the Neotropical Ant Genus Linepithema. Systematic Entomology, online early, doi: 10.1111/j.…
awild | October 20, 2008I've blogged a lot about lady beetles recently. That's because we have been inundated by them ever since moving to Illinois. The beetle deluge is not a good thing, though, as ours are nearly all Harmonia axyridis, an extraordinarily pesty species imported from Asia in what must rank as one of the most poorly executed biological control projects ever. In the wake of the alien lady beetle invasion, our native species have all but disappeared.
Enter the Lost Ladybug Project. The project is a citizen-science initiative out of Cornell University to gather information on the distribution of…
awild | October 17, 2008
Cycloneda munda - Polished Lady Beetle
Champaign, Illinois
It's a depressing time to be a lady beetle aficionado in the midwest. Most of the beetles I've seen around town are pesty invasives like the multi-colored lady beetle (from Asia) and the seven-spotted lady beetle (from Europe). But one native species, Cycloneda munda, is hanging on, perhaps because it is smaller than the competition and able to subsist on smaller prey. A couple weeks ago I photographed this pair enjoying an intimate moment on the fall goldenrod.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO…
awild | October 16, 2008
Pheidole rugithorax Eguchi 2008 - Vietnam
In today's Zootaxa, Katsuyuki Eguchi has a taxonomic revision of the northern Vietnamese Pheidole, recognizing six new ant species for a genus that is already the world's most diverse. The revision also contains several nomeclatural changes and a key to the thirty or so species occurring in the region.
As in most tropical taxonomy this research has a comedic/tragic effect of adding several more species, about which nothing is known, to a catalog already overflowing with equally mysterious species. We don't know what they eat, how long they live,…
awild | October 15, 2008Apparently, the world's worst superhero is Ant-Man. Great. That's exactly the kind of press we need.
awild | October 14, 2008
Given the hypothermia I endured to shoot this Nothomyrmecia, I am pleased whenever I can put the photographs to work. Physical discomfort does pay off sometimes, although in hindsight it wasn't too bright of me to not have packed warm clothes for an ant that forages just above freezing. Here's a screen capture of the original RAW file, in series:
awild | October 14, 2008
Iridomyrmex reburrus
Highlights from the recent technical literature:
Savanna ants more resistant to fire than forest ants. Parr & Andersen. 2008. Fire resilience of ant assemblages in long-unburnt savanna of northern Australia. Austral Ecology. doi: 10.1111/j.1442-9993.2008.01848
Abstract: Tropical savannas and rainforests contrast in their flammability and the fire resilience of their associated species. While savanna species generally exhibit high resilience to burning, there is much debate about the fire resilience of forest-associated species, and the persistence of forest patches…
awild | October 12, 2008Here's a question for my myrmecologist readers. Has anyone published observations of ritualized fighting among colonies of Pogonomyrmex harvester ants? I know such behavior was famously studied by Bert Hoelldobler in Myrmecocystus, and that ritual combat has been noted in Camponotus and Iridomyrmex. The reason I ask is that the pogos in my front yard back in Tucson would engage in what looks like the same sort of behavior. Ants from opposing colonies stand up on little stilt-legs and push each other about without anyone getting hurt.
I suspect these non-lethal ways of establishing…
awild | October 10, 2008
Languria sp. Lizard Beetle (Erotylidae), California
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
ISO 100, f/13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | October 8, 2008
Cataulacus brevisetosus - armored arboreal ant (Africa)
Cephalotes rohweri - armored arboreal ant (North America)
Tetraponera natalensis - elongate twig ant (Africa)
Pseudomyrmex pallidus - elongate twig ant (North America)
Plectroctena mandibularis - giant hunting ant (Africa)
Dinoponera australis - giant hunting ant (South America)
Dorylus helvolus - subterranean ant predator (Africa)
Neivamyrmex californicus - subterranean ant predator (North America)
awild | October 6, 2008
Phrynoponera transversa Bolton & Fisher 2008
Gabon
Barry Bolton and Brian Fisher have revised the African ponerine genus Phrynoponera, in a monograph appearing today in Zootaxa. Phrynoponera are stout, heavily-armored predatory ants comprising a handful of poorly known species. Bolton and Fisher describe two new species, P. pulchella and P. transversa, to bring the tally of known species to five.
Source: Bolton, B. and B. F. Fisher. 2008. The Afrotropical ponerine ant genus Phrynoponera Wheeler (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 1892: 35-52.
awild | October 5, 2008
Coccinella septempunctata
This weekend's project: to shoot a beetle in flight. I chose ladybirds not because they are pretty, but because they are the slowiest, clumsiest beetles I could find in any number.  An easy target.
I had a cast of several beetles from two species, the seven-spotted ladybird Coccinella septempunctata and the multi-colored ladybird Harmonia axyridis. I placed the beetles inside a whitebox with a backdrop of leaves, along with my Canon 550 speedlite flash, and tried to capture the beetles as they launched themselves into the air. The timing was tricky, as it…
awild | October 3, 2008
Megacyllene robiniae - Locust Borer
Champaign, Illinois
Goldenrod flowers are a magnet for late summer insects, and among the most spectacular attractions is the locust borer, a wasp-striped longhorn beetle. They gather on the flowers to mate and to feed on pollen.
Megacyllene larvae are pests of black locust trees. Their burrows in the wood damage trees directly, but more seriously, the wounds expose the tree to an even more damaging fungus. Pesty or no, they are charismatic insects and much more cooperative photographic subjects than the ants I usually shoot.
photo details (top 3…
awild | October 2, 2008
Prenolepis imparis - The Winter Ant
Champaign, Illinois
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | October 1, 2008
Lachnomyrmex amazonicus - Feitosa and Brandão 2008
The new world tropics continue to be a rich source of species discovery. Today's issue of Zootaxa contains a monograph by Rodrigo Feitosa and Beto Brandão revising the ant genus Lachnomyrmex, a small yet delightfully wrinkled group of soil-dwelling ants. Of the 16 species recognized in the new paper, ten were previously unknown. For the mathematically-challenged, that's more than half.
Lachnomyrmex amazonicus, pictured above, is one of the new species. It has been recorded from lowland humid forests in the states of Amazonas, Para…
awild | September 30, 2008...are queens in the African driver ant genus Dorylus, captured on video here:
awild | September 30, 2008
Phymata ambush bug - Champaign, Illinois
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | September 29, 2008
Heterospilus sp., head & compound eye, Costa Rica
Here are some shots from my training session this morning at the Beckman Institute's Scanning Electron Microscope (SEM). I haven't used SEM for years- wow! Great fun. Click on each image to enlarge.
Heterospilus sp. mesosoma
Heterospilus sp., ovipositor
For contrast, here's a photo of a wasp in the same genus taken with my standard Canon macro gear:
Heterospilus sp. Costa Rica, taken with a Canon 20D dSLR & macro lens
We'll be deciding over the coming months which type of images to use for our project. As you can see,…
awild | September 27, 2008
Atta texana queen and worker
Ant queens are those individuals in a nest that lay the eggs. They're pretty important, of course, as without reproduction the colony dwindles and disappears.
Understandably, ant-keepers have an interest in making sure their pet colonies have queens. Conversely, pest control folks trying to get rid of ant colonies need to be sure that they've eliminated queens. Whether your interest is live ants or dead ants, I'll give some pointers in this post for recognizing queens.
In many species the difference between workers and queens is obvious. Consider the…