insects
awild | January 16, 2009
Zygogramma leaf beetles, Arizona
Leaf beetles such as these brightly marked Zygogramma constitute one of the largest evolutionary radiations- the Chrysomelidae- among all animals. This family of beetles owes its tremendous diversity to an herbivorous association with flowering plants.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, indirect strobe fired into white box
awild | January 15, 2009This weekend, Arizona State University is hosting a slate of myrmecologists to brainstorm on ant genomes. I'd link to the meeting information, but apparently the gathering is so informal that they've not given the event a web page. In any case, the topic is this: in the age of (relatively) cheap genomes, which ants should we sequence? And, what should we do with the assembled data?
I originally planned to attend, but life intervenes and I'm frozen to the tundra of central Illinois. Instead, I will register here a few suggestions about which species should considered, in addition to…
awild | January 14, 2009From the Small Science Collective comes a little zine about ants:
The idea, I guess, is that printable pamphlets are ideal for scattering about in public places. Or as handouts during door-to-door myrmeco-evangelism.
awild | January 10, 2009A few months ago I mentioned the Lost Lady Bug Project.
It seems they've updated the site so that visitors can now view all the photo submissions. Pretty cool.
edyong | January 9, 2009To our ears, the buzz of a mosquito is intensely irritating and a sign of itchiness to come, but to theirs, it's a lover's serenade. The high-pitched drone of a female is a siren's song that attracts male mosquitoes. And a new study shows that when the two love-bugs meet, they perform a duet, matching each other's buzzing frequency with careful precision.
The female Aedes aegypti mosquito (the carrier of both dengue and yellow fever) beats her wings with a fundamental frequency of about 400Hz, producing a pitch just slightly lower than concert A. Males on the other hand, have a fundamental…
awild | January 9, 2009
Gibbium sp. Spider Beetle, Arizona
Spider beetles are not predators like their namesakes but are instead pests of stored grain. I was surprised at how difficult they were to photograph. Their round bodies were hard to fit into a single focal plane, while their reflective elytra were prone to harsh glare. I could not do much about the first problem, but the lighting was solved by placing the beetle inside a white box and firing an off-camera strobe into the box but away from the beetle.
Gibbium sp., Arizona
photo details (both images): Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS…
awild | January 8, 2009
Sericomyrmex amabilis in its fungus garden, Panama
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | January 6, 2009
Odontomachus meinerti trap-jaw ant, Argentina
One perk of being at a research university is the opportunity to shoot the various study organisms on campus. These subjects are interesting- they have to be, or they wouldn't be studied- and when the research goes public I get the chance to disseminate my photographs with the science media outlets that cover the story.
Among my favorite campus animals is the Odontomachus trap-jaw ant, one of the focal taxa in Andy Suarez's lab. The researchers are looking at the biomechanics of the jaw, one of the fastest recorded appendages among all…
awild | January 4, 2009
leafcutter ant mating swarm, Arizona
The sparkle of these insects' wings was captured by pointing the camera at the sun while standing behind the mating swarm. I find backlighting to be one of the most pleasing effects for translucent wings.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8Â macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/11, 1/500 sec
awild | January 1, 2009
Formica incerta, Illinois
Despite a widespread belief that ants produce formic acid, the habit is confined to only one of the 20-some ant subfamilies, the formicinae. This is among the most abundant subfamilies, containing the familiar carpenter ants and field ants, and is recognizable by the single constricted waist segment and an acid-dispersing nozzle called the acidopore at the tip of the abdomen. The most recent myrmecos.net upload covers a variety of formicine species from Arizona, Illinois, and South Africa.
Click here to visit the gallery.
edyong | January 1, 2009The mosquito Aedes aegypti sucks the blood of people from all over the tropics, and exchanges it for the virus that causes dengue fever - a disease that afflicts 40 million people every year. The mosquito has proven to be a tough adversary and efforts to drive it from urban settings have generally failed in the long-term. So how do you fight such an accomplished parasite? Simple - use a better parasite. In fact, try the most successful one in the world, a bacterium called Wolbachia.
Wolbachia's success rests on two traits. First, it targets the most diverse group of animals on the planet,…
awild | December 31, 2008
A long-tongued horse fly takes a sip of nectar in Arizona's Chiricahua mountains.
100% crop of the same image.
photo details: Canon 65mm MP-E 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | December 26, 2008
Pasimachus sp. ground beetle, Arizona
My apologies for the lack of blogging the past few days. I've been taking some time away from posting for the holidays, but I'll be back next week. In the meantime, here's a Pasimachus ground beetle...
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/18, 1/250 sec, indirect strobe in a white box
clock | December 23, 2008A well-written press release on a very well done and exciting study:
Honey bees on cocaine dance more, changing ideas about the insect brain:
In a study published in 2007, Robinson and his colleagues reported that treatment with octopamine caused foraging honey bees to dance more often. This indicated that octopamine played a role in honey bee dance behavior. It also suggested a framework for understanding the evolution of altruistic behavior, Robinson said.
"The idea behind that study was that maybe this mechanism that structures selfish behavior - eating - was co-opted during social…
edyong | December 22, 2008The relationship between bees and plants is one of the most well-known in the natural world. Almost everyone knows that bees carry pollen from plant to plant and receive a rewarding sip of sugary nectar in return. Surely there are few sides to this most familiar of alliances left to discover?
Not so. Jurgen Tautz and Michael Rostas from the University of Wuerzburg have found that bees provide another service to flowers, besides acting as a pollen vehicle - they deliver a protection service for their very buzzing scares away hungry caterpillars.
In their University's botanical garden,…
awild | December 20, 2008
An unusually festive jumping ant from a laboratory colony at Arizona State University. Researchers mark ants with unique patterns of paint to keep track of individuals for studies of ant behavior.
awild | December 17, 2008In an earlier post I listed my favorite insect images of the year taken by other photographers. Now it's my turn. Here is the best of my own work over the last 12 months.
Laccophilus pictus, Arizona
Dinoponera australis, Argentina
Parasitic Cotesia wasp attacks a Manduca larva
Polyrhachis schlueteri, South Africa
Crematogaster tricolor, South Africa
Weaver Ant (Oecophylla longinoda), South Africa
Rose Aphids (Macrosiphum rosae), Arizona
Thaumatomyrmex atrox, Venezuela
Simopelta queen and workers, Venezuela
Pheidole obtusospinosa, Arizona
Harpegnathos saltator, India
awild | December 16, 2008Forelius damiani Guerrero & Fernández 2008
Colombia
The ant genus Forelius - named for the eminent Swiss myrmecologist Auguste Forel- is known for its abundance in hot, dry climates in both North and South America. This affinity for deserts has given the genus a markedly disjunct distribution, abundant in subtropical South America and in the warmer regions of North and Central America but absent in the more humid intervening climes. Or so we'd assumed.
Last week Colombian myrmecologists Roberto Guerrero & Fernando Fernández filled the gap with a newly-discovered species of…
awild | December 12, 2008
Cytilus alternatus, Pennsylvania
This lovely little round insect is called a pill beetle. Why is that, you ask?
Check this out:
Retractile legs!
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | December 10, 2008
Apterobittacus apterus, California
I lived in California until a few years ago, and one thing I enjoyed about the Golden State was the unique insect fauna, full of bizarre and relictual creatures. One of the oddities was the wingless hangingfly, a leggy mecopteran that lurks in the coastal grasslands.
The insect above was photographed indoors. I made a makeshift studio out of various bits of debris lying around the lab: a matte black notebook for a backdrop, a jar to hold the grass upright, and the white lid to a styrofoam cooler propped a few inches above the insect. An off-camera…