[note: this and all preceding entries are reposted from myrmecos.wordpress.com; guesses for this Monday Night Mystery are also lodged here.]
What in the world is this strange creature?
The point breakdown* will be as follows:
2 points for order
2 points for family
2 points for genus
2 points for species
2 points for describing the behavior
As in past weeks, you have to be first in each category.
*What are Myrmecos points good for? The cumulative winner at the end of the month gets to choose either 1)any 8x10 print from alexanderwild.com, or 2) a guest blog post on a topic of their choosing.
More like this
Joey Bernard, who writes about science under Linux, has just started a multi (as in two?) part series on GSL, the GNU Scientific Library. It is here. Just browsing through the files of GSL is fun.
I'll return to my Dawkins series later in the week. But after all our exertions recently trying to resolve the mysteries of the universe, I find myself in the mood for a straight math post.
I know what you're thinking. You're thinking, “Gosh, it sure is neat that we can generate all Pythagorean triples from one simple formula, but what happens if we try an exponent bigger than two?
As an introduction to a mathematical game, and how you
can use a little bit of math to form a description of the game that
allows you to determine the optimal strategy, I'm going to talk a bit about Nim.
Welcome Alex, good to see you back.
Order: Hymenoptera
Family: Formicidae
Genus: Cephalotes
Species: rohweri
The colony nests in holes left by wood-boring beetles and soldier ants block the nest entrance with their heads (as here).
Would love to say that I had expert knowledge but google is my friend.
Source ....
alexanderwild.com
Was that cheating?
And then of course I wander over to look at your old blog....
Now, see, I feel better having read that bit of information from dominich. I was looking at that hole last night thinking it was a pretty nice D-shaped Buprestid-ey hole...but clearly a Buprestid was not lying within. I wanted the answer to this mystery to be "a beetle". I'm happy to know it is. A little bit. Sort of.
Hey, you should submit this photo to the Linnaean Games for the ESA national meeting.
That's an awesome idea. The Linnaean games are great- our local team here at UI cleaned up last year in Indianapolis.
Coleoptera
Carabidae
Cychrus
Cychrus caraboides
Moist woodlands, feeds primarily on snails.