specimen requests
awild | November 23, 2009
Azteca instabilis, Guatemala
An urgent bleg to Myrmecos readers:
If you have recent collections of Azteca ants suitable for molecular work, and you can mail them out within the week, please consider sending me any samples you can spare. I'd be especially grateful for species like Azteca instabilis, A. trigona, or A. velox that do not live in Cecropia.
Why the rush? I am writing an NSF grant with a group of ecologists and plant systematists to look at evolutionary patterns in the famous Cecropia-Azteca ant-plant system. To make our case to NSF we need preliminary data as a proof of…
awild | September 17, 2009Marek Borowiec writes in this morning with a request for ant specimens from the subfamily Cerapachyinae:
Dear Colleagues,
I am currently working on the ant subfamily Cerapachyinae. I plan to work on both alpha-taxonomy as well as phylogeny of these ants. In the course of my study I will need as much material as possible.
In addition to the traits already looked upon by other researchers, I want to explore as many new characters as possible, and so I plan to take a close look at both adults and immatures, the structure of metapleural, metatibial and metatarsal glands, sting apparatus,…