insects
awild | February 7, 2009
Formica francoeuri tending larvae of the copper butterfly, Lycaena xanthoides. Southern California
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | February 6, 2009As if butterflies weren't flamboyant enough already, it seems that some of them actively impersonate queens.
Queen ants, that is. A report by Francesca Barbero et al in today's issue of Science documents a clever strategy employed by a European butterfly, the Mountain Alcon Blue Maculinea rebeli, to infiltrate nests of Myrmica schencki. The immature stages of the butterfly are parasites of ant colonies, and it seems the secret to their success is acoustic mimicry. The larvae and pupae squeak like queens, eliciting preferential treatment from the workers. Here's the abstract:
Ants…
awild | February 6, 2009
Ceruchus piceus - Stag Beetle - New York
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
edyong | February 6, 2009Ants are among the most successful of living things. Their nests are well-defended fortresses, coordinated through complex communication systems involving touch and chemical signals. These strongholds are stocked with food and secure from the outside world, so they make a tempting prospect for any burglars that manage to break in.
One species of butterfly - the mountain alcon blue (Maculinea rebeli) - is just one such master felon. Somehow, it manipulates the workers into carrying it inside the nest, feeding it and caring for it. The caterpillar does so little for itself that it packs on 98…
awild | February 3, 2009
Mark your calendar. The 26th annual Insect Fear Film Festival will be held February 28th at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign. This year's theme is "Centipede Cinema".
The film festival is legendary. I've heard about the event for years, and its lineup of bug flicks, live displays, and art contests have received widespread media coverage. Now that I live in Champaign I'll be able to attend my first one.
The announcement:
The Insect Fear Film Festival - scaring the general public with
horrific films and horrific filmmaking since 1984
The…
awild | February 3, 2009Since the device we commonly use to capture insects is called an aspirator, does that mean the insects we collect are aspirations?
Discuss.
edyong | January 29, 2009Serotonin is a chemical jack-of-all-trades. It relays messages between the cells of the brain and in doing so, controls everything from anger to sleep, body temperature to appetite. But in one insect, it is the key to Pandora's box, periodically unleashing some of the most destructive swarms on the planet. It is the chemical responsible for turning solitary desert locusts into massive plagues.
With desert locusts, you get two insects for the price of one. For most of their lives, they are positively antisocial and will avoid other locusts - a far cry from the devastating swarms that farmers…
awild | January 27, 2009Cicindela has been playing with scanners and saturniid moths, to great result:
The original file must be huge! Â Worth noting that Cicindela is taking a lead from Joseph Scheer, who first perfected the technique.
grrlscientist | January 26, 2009tags: ants, hymenoptera, excavating ant city, nature, science, streaming video
This fascinating video details how a scientist learns what an ant colony looks like in the wild -- it's astonishing how big these things can get [3:16]
awild | January 23, 2009
Amblycheila cylindriformis, New Mexico
The Giant Tiger Beetle Amblycheila cylindriformis is a tank of an insect, at 35mm in length the largest tiger beetle in North America.  Unlike the more familiar day-active Cicindela tiger beetles, the flightless Amblycheila lumbers about at night, catching hapless insects in its massive jaws.
Photographing Amblycheila was difficult on account of the insect's shiny integument, so I used a white-lined cardboard box as a miniature studio. A strobe fired into the box produced a diffuse white light.
On display at the Audubon Insectarium.
photo…
grrlscientist | January 22, 2009tags: Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly, Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis, Joel Sartore, National Geographic, image of the day
Palos Verdes Blue Butterfly (Glaucopsyche lygdamus palosverdesensis)
4,300 (Estimated 300 wild and 4,000 captive).
Image: Joel Sartore/National Geographic. [larger view].
Wikipedia writes;
The Palos Verdes Blue butterfly is a small endangered butterfly native to the Palos Verdes Peninsula in southwest Los Angeles County, California. As its distribution has been proven to be limited to one single site it has one of the best claims to being the world's rarest…
awild | January 21, 2009Not much time to blog today. Instead, some links:
Roberto Keller has wonderfully detailed SEMs of the clypeal pegs of amblyoponine ants.
Douglas Adams' Jeremy Lee's view of Australia is spot on, except for the bit about snakes, which are worse than Adams Lee thinks. (h/t John Wilkins)
The New Scientist lists their most stunning images of 2008. (via Ainsley Seago, whose beetle cuticle comes in at #5)
Christopher Taylor ponders the evolution of insect metamorphosis.
Igor Siwanowicz is, in my eyes, the finest insect portrait photographer working today. Check out an ad campaign of his (h/t…
edyong | January 21, 2009If the sound of eating dung all your life doesn't sound that appealing to you, you're not alone. A beetle called Deltochilum valgum shares your distaste, which is quite surprising given that it's a dung beetle.
There are over 5,000 species of dung beetle and almost all of them feed mainly on the droppings of other animals (and more specifically, on the rich supply of bacteria they contain). D.valgum is the black sheep of the family, the only one that has abandoned the manure-based diet of its fellows and taken to hunting live meat for a living.
D.valgum lives in the lowland rainforests of…
awild | January 20, 2009New Orleans, January 2009
The first major public exhibit to open in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina was the Audubon Nature Institute's Insectarium. We took advantage of a lull in our schedule last week to make the pilgrimage to what turns out to be a surprisingly ambitious operation. It well exceeded our expectations.
The entrance on Canal Street.
Spying on live bumblebees.
Inside the bees' nest.
Yes, educational bits too.
This ant looks familiar.
Not a family exhibit: stick insects have sexual relations in public.
They let non-insects in too.
Another one.
The proud…
awild | January 20, 2009Over at the Ant Farm Forum they're playing a round of Name That Ant*. This week's challenge was posed by MarekB and is a particularly tough one. Go on over to try your hand.
*This sort of activity is certainly not geeky.
awild | January 19, 2009
Camponotus discolor male, queen, and worker
Here's an image I should have taken years ago. It's a stylized shot of the different castes in an ant colony, perfect for a textbook illustration of the morphological distinctions among males, gynes, and workers. Better late than never, I suppose.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | January 18, 2009
Only one lens can take this shot
If you've paid attention to insect photography over the past decade, you'll likely have noticed that a single lens, Canon's MP-E 1-5x macro, has come to dominate the market. Every professional insect photographer I know owns one, and many of the dedicated amateurs do as well. Indeed, some photographers have even switched from Nikon to Canon just to be able to use it.
Yet the lens is also a throwback, possessing few of the electronic features of modern camera technology. It is largely manual, with no auto-focus or image stabilization, and is…
edyong | January 17, 2009
Bee hives, with their regularly arranged honeycombs and permanently busy workers may seem like the picture of order. But look closer, and hives are often abuzz with secret codes, eavesdropping spies and deadly alliances.
African honeybees are victimised by the parasitic small hive beetle. The beetles move through beehives eating combs, stealing honey and generally making a mess. But at worst, they are a minor pest, for the bees have a way of dealing with them.
They imprison the intruders in the bowels of the hive and carefully remove any eggs they find. In turn, the beetle sometimes fools…