Alex Wild
awild
Posts by this author
September 14, 2009
Photographed this weekend in Dixon Springs, Illinois:
These Aphaenogaster lamellidens foragers have discovered a live centipede and are attempting to pull it from its burrow.
photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/11-f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused…
September 13, 2009
Proceratium silaceum, alate queen.
Last week at the Vermillion River Observatory I collected this alate queen of Proceratium silaceum, an odd and highly specialized subterranean predator of spider eggs. Once I finished photographing the ant I pickled it in 100% ethanol. The specimen should be…
September 12, 2009
Lasius claviger citronella ants
Vermillion River Observatory, Illinois
September 10, 2009
Propodilobus pingorum
It's been nearly three weeks since the last new myrmicine ant genus was announced. An eternity, it seems. I've been going through novel-myrmicine-ant-withdrawal after a spate of descriptions earlier this year. Where will we be able to satisfy our craving for new and…
September 10, 2009
I nominate Polyergus for the worst common name among ants: Amazon Ants. I'm cranky this morning and for some reason this has been irking me.
I now know they were named for their habit of raiding other ant nests, but I spent much of my childhood thinking they were some exotic tropical creature…
September 9, 2009
Multiple foundress queens of Acromyrmex versicolor atop their shared fungus garden.
A striking result from recent studies on the co-evolution of leafcutter ants and their fungus is that the two lineages do not show a tight pattern of coevolution. That is, the evolutionary relationships among the…
September 8, 2009
By request, I have now organized the ant photos by subfamily. This mimics the arrangement from the old site. For the smug-muggers out there who want to know how it works, I basically set up an "old journal" gallery and put the genus names and links into the caption box. I used CSS to set all…
September 8, 2009
Crematogaster lineolata queen with a retinue of workers. (Vermillion River Observatory, Illinois)
This weekend we took a trip with some entomology students to the Vermillion River Observatory. The astronomical function of the observatory has long been abandoned, but the site remains as a lovely…
September 7, 2009
Long live Myrmecos.net!
By way of a replacement, the ant photos are now over at alexanderwild.com:
Advantages of the new site include:
Galleries can be viewed as a slide show
Geo data are integrated with Google Maps (I'm still working on this)
Images can be displayed at a larger size (up to 800…
September 3, 2009
[brightcove vid=36652867001&exp3=25500650001&surl=http://c.brightcove.com/services&pubid=1138077173&w=300&h=225]
As if job prospects weren't already bad enough for myrmecologists, now we're competing with chimps.
At least they haven't figured out how to make pooters. Yet.
September 2, 2009
I'm forever apologizing for the lack of blog activity. Sorry. I know.
I owe my vast and loyal readership (Hi Mom!) an explantion. Behind the scenes here at Myrmecos Industries we are 90% done with a significant overhaul of the ant photo collection. Essentially, the content of myrmecos.net…
August 27, 2009
Here's your chance!
Anheuser-Busch has invited consumers to pitch ideas for a Bud TV spot that will run during the Chinese New Year in February 2010, Advertising Age reported Wednesday.
The spots must feature ants, which have starred in A-B commercials during the Chinese New Year for the past…
August 26, 2009
Pyramica clypeata
Urbana, Illinois
photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
August 22, 2009
Here's why blogging of late has been a little...uninspired:
Mingus plans his next paw print
We're busy with all those projects that are acquired with an old house. This weekend we are painting the kitchen and dining room. To the extent that Mingus the Cat will let us.
August 20, 2009
Biodiversity discovery continues apace. The past couple of weeks have seen not one, but TWO new myrmicine ant genera.
First, Shattuck described the Australian Austromorium:
Austromorium hetericki Shattuck 2009 - Australia
Then this morning, Fernández et al introduced a pretty little yellow ant…
August 19, 2009
In case you were wondering, ants turn out to be ambidextrous.
Instead of favoring one side or the other as we humans do with our hands, ants show no preference for working with either mandible. That's the conclusion of a new study by Cassill & Singh:
Abstract: The elongation and sharp teeth…
August 19, 2009
The best way to cook a certain kind of caterpillar and make it taste really nice may not be the very best thing to do with a grasshopper. One you might want to parboil, the other one you might want to stir fry. Iâll give you a good example. A friend of mine and I cooked a certain type of scarab…
August 13, 2009
As if we systematists didn't have enough to worry about with the worldwide extinction crisis and the dwindling presence of taxonomists in academia, now we've got the vultures lawyers laying claim to the primary tools for our science.
Microsoft is trying to patent phylogenetics. No, seriously. …
August 12, 2009
Paratrechina longicornis
Florida
Their abdomens swollen with sugar water, two black crazy ants (Paratrechina longicornis) share a moment. This species has traveled around the globe with human commerce and is now common in warmers regions worldwide.
photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens…
August 10, 2009
Carol Kaesuk Yoon opines:
We are, all of us, abandoning taxonomy, the ordering and naming of life. We are willfully...losing the ability to order and name and therefore losing a connection to and a place in the living world.
No wonder so few of us can really see what is out there.
August 10, 2009
Pogonomyrmex maricopa (at left) tussles with an Aphaenogaster albisetosa at the Aphaenogaster nest entrance.
While in Arizona, I chanced upon a set of ant fights that I'd observed several times previously. Single workers of the maricopa harvester ant Pogonomyrmex maricopa would approach a nest…
August 10, 2009
This week, Public Radio International is hosting a forum whereby you- the fine people of the General Public- get a chance to converse online with eminent entomologist May Berenbaum about all things DDT.
The forum accompanies a piece from last week's "The World". For background, you can read…
August 9, 2009
In a rare bit of good environmental news, herpetologist extraordinaire Rich Glor travels to Haiti in search of a potentially extinct Anolis lizard and finds a pair of surviving populations.
August 7, 2009
A British film crew is in Arizona to film "Planet of the Ants," a National Geographic Television documentary about the picnic-spoiling arthropods.
The filmmakers, who shot in Phoenix and Tucson over the past couple of weeks, are now in the town of Portal, near the New Mexico border, until…
August 5, 2009
Doesn't "bigote" mean "moustache" in Spanish?
Why, yes. It does.
Pheidole bigote Longino 2009
Chiapas, Mexico
The inimitable Jack Longino published a taxonomic paper today on the Central American Pheidole, including descriptions of some 23 new species. Among these is the marvelously moustached…
August 5, 2009
Here's a novel use for an ant photo. German designer Beat Hintermann induced a party of wedding guests to individually color in squares from one of my images of fighting Odontomachus. The pieces were then assembled as a gift to the happy couple. Both, I'm told, study the aggressive…
August 4, 2009
Here's an image for the textbooks:
Ants, like butterflies, pass through egg, larva, and pupa phases on their way to adulthood. While in Florida earlier in this summer I found a nest of the twig ant Pseudomyrmex gracilis with brood present in all stages, providing the material to make these images.…
August 3, 2009
Swooping from the top of a saguaro down to the desert floor: Howard Bourne swings the crane while Martin Dohrn drives the camera. Tucson Mountain Park.
What was I doing in Arizona last month?
Thanks for asking. I was helping a film crew wrangle harvester ants for an upcoming National Geographic…
August 3, 2009
Myrmician, whose lovely aussie ant photos have been livening up the pages of Flickr, has started a blog. Go read!