ants
awild | March 9, 2010Although this paper is several years old, I still read through it for a good laugh now and again. It's a bold attempt by Aussie myrmecologist Alan Andersen to remedy the dearth of ant common names. Hilarity ensues.
Snugglepot Ant?
As we know, ants are too small and too numerous for most species to have caught the attention of the broader human populace. Few species have ever acquired a vernacular name, in any language, and biologists are generally happy to use the formal Latin nomenclature.
Genial Killer Ants?
Andersen's hallucinogenic trip through the myrmecofauna is worth a read,…
awild | March 4, 2010
Who's that odd ant out?
While in sunny Florida last summer (ah, sunshine! I vaguely remember what that looks like), I spent an hour peering into a nest of little Dorymyrmex elegans. These slender, graceful ants are among Florida's more charming insects.
Every few minutes, though, the flow of elegant orange insects out of the nest was interrupted by a darker, more robust ant: Dorymyrmex reginicula. Who was this interloper?
Dorymyrmex reginicula is a temporary social parasite. Mature colonies behave pretty much like normal ants. Workers guard the nest, forage for food, and tend the larvae.…
awild | March 3, 2010I understand the product works by converting fire ant DNA into that of other species.
awild | February 28, 2010A short clip from the BBC program "Ant Attack"
Driver ant males are astoundingly strange creatures. They are larger, more muscular, more exaggerated than most other male ants. The reason is likely linked to the behavior shown in the above video: males must first be accepted by a gauntlet of choosy workers.
A classic paper by Franks and Hoelldobler (1987) describes the theory. This preference of workers for bulkier males- and a corresponding slaughter of smaller or otherwise unsuitable ones- drives an evolutionary trajectory towards increasing monstrosity. It's an ant version of the peacock's…
awild | February 25, 2010The Great Ant Escape
Incidentally, what's up with the obvious photoshop job in the accompanying image? It looks like a chorus line.
*update* - it seems they've swapped the image out for a more sensible one. The original is here.
awild | February 23, 2010A video from Cambridge University highlights an infectiously enthusiastic Chris Clemente as he figures out how ants stick to smooth surfaces:
Wow.
Two things strike me about the video. First, they simplified the science for a lay audience without fundamentally changing it. That's something of a rarity, as any scientist who has seen their work covered in the media can attest. Second, they did this while retaining a sense of humor and the strong sense of humanity in the scientific process.
Most scientists I know have a similarly intense fascination with their subjects- that's a rich vein for…
awild | February 16, 2010The online early section of Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution this week has the first comprehensive phylogeny of a rather important genus of ants: Myrmica.
Myrmica is ubiquitous in the colder climates of North America and Eurasia, with a few seemingly incongruous species inhabiting the mountains of tropical southeast Asia. The genus contains about 200 species, many that are common soil-nesting ants in lawns and gardens, and at least one damaging invasive species, M. rubra. The taxonomy ranks among the most difficult of any ant genus, as workers of different species tend to be numbingly…
awild | February 12, 2010
Tapinoma sessile, the odorous house ant, with larvae
Last summer I replaced the old covering on our porch roof. When I peeled back the rotting shingles, I was greeted by a frenzy of frenetic brown ants- thousands of them- running about every which way. Dozens of fat queens scurried for cover. It was an impressive display of formicid infestation, reminiscent of the swarms of invasive Argentine ants in California.
But these weren't exotic pests. This was a native species, Tapinoma sessile, whose pleasant blue-cheese odor lends it the name "odorous house ant".
Tapinoma sessile is found…
awild | February 10, 2010
Plectroctena mandibularis, South Africa
Every now and again someone asks how I get the white background on these sorts of stylized ant shots. Pretty simple: it's a sheet of cheap white printer paper. Overexposing the shot slightly by boosting the flash evens out the white.
I set the ant down on the paper under a petri dish or a lens cap, let her settle in, and remove the cover to get a few seconds of a relaxed ant before she's off to the races.
Photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D.
ISO 100, f13, 1/250th sec, diffuse twin flash
awild | February 10, 2010It's no secret to anyone with an email inbox that the real internet is shadowed by a fake internet. The fake internet is full of fake blogs, fake web sites, fake discussion forums, and fake emails. All full of real links to real companies who pay someone money to increase their visibility by gaming the Google rankings using vast and vacuous link farms.
Anyway. I usually ignore this parallel universe, but this morning I found something entertaining and ant-related. Repeated instances of what looks like a bad student essay were splashed across dozens of sites in the spamoverse, each with…
awild | February 9, 2010
Figure 1. Relationship between normalized metabolic rate and body mass for unitary organisms and whole colonies (from Hou et al 2010)
The notion that insect colonies and their constituent individuals are analogous to multicellular organisms and their constituent cells has been a controversial idea for decades. Is it useful, for example, to think of an ant colony as a single individual? Do superorganisms really exist as coherent entities? Or do insect colonies function more as aggregations of individuals?
Last week, PNAS published the first application of empirical methods to test the…
awild | February 3, 2010...are at it again:
The twilight zone:
ambient light levels trigger activity in primitive ants
What's unfortunate about this title is that the judgement "primitive" has nothing to do with the research. It is unnecessary. The study is about how one species of ant uses ambient light levels to trigger foraging. It's a nicely done bit of work. But whether or not these ants are "primitive" has zilch to do with the science.
Back in the day, western anthropologists would study Primitive Culture. Such terms are no longer used in that field, and for good reason. It's not just that labeling other…
awild | February 2, 2010A reader asks:
I also have a MP-E lens with the MT-24EX flash unit. I was curious to know something I didnât see you mention in your recent blog post about this setup.
Could you share any technical points regarding how you achieve the visible backgrounds with that lens? In general, I get very nice shots with everything beyond the focused subject completely blacked out.
Since dark areas in photographs are the bits that aren't sending light to the camera, it follows that getting a visible backdrop means applying light behind the subject.
Earlier, I wrote that the black backdrop in insect…
awild | February 1, 2010According to a new study by Olivier Roux et al in PLoS One, she is spreading pheromones from a previously unknown gland:
Abstract: In Oecophylla, an ant genus comprising two territorially dominant arboreal species, workers are known to (1) use anal spots to mark their territories, (2) drag their gaster along the substrate to deposit short-range recruitment trails, and (3) drag the extruded rectal gland along the substrate to deposit the trails used in long-range recruitment. Here we study an overlooked but important marking behavior in which O. longinoda workers first rub the underside of…
awild | January 30, 2010Pogonomyrmex badius Harvester Ants
Archbold Biological Station, Florida, USA
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D.
ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, diffused twin flash
edyong | January 28, 2010In 1912, Antarctic explorer Captain Lawrence Oates willingly walked to his death so that his failing health would not jeopardise his friends' odds of survival. Stepping from his tent into a raging blizzard, he left his men with the immortal words, "I am just going outside and may be some time." It was a legendary act of heroism but one that is mirrored by far tinier altruists on a regular basis - ants.
Like Captain Oates, workers of the ant species Temnothorax unifasciatus will also walk off to die in solitude, if they're carrying a fungal infection. In fact, Jurgen Heinze and Bartosz…
awild | January 24, 2010
Here's something new. Instead of trawling youtube to find the Sunday Night Movie, I've made my own. Click above to watch the compressed version, or if you have a speedy connection click here to see it in full HD glory.
I spent the afternoon experimenting with the video capabilities of the new Canon EOS 7d. The 7d is the newest camera in Canon's SLR lineup, and unlike earlier models it can shoot high-definition video as well as stills.
I've been very curious to see how the video performs with my macro lenses. A lab colony of Odontomachus chelifer trap-jaw ants at the University proved patient…