ants
awild | June 4, 2009In 2002 I took a shiny new Nikon Coolpix 995 on a research trip to Argentina and Paraguay. I'd not done much photography to that point, but it was tremendous fun. I spent nearly as much time shooting the region's charismatic ant fauna as I did working on my dissertation project. The resulting images formed the heart of a new web site, www.myrmecos.net, that went live a couple months after my return. The original myrmecos site can still be viewed at the Internet Archive.
Of course, as my equipment and aesthetic standards improved the old images I had been so proud of began to seem...…
awild | June 3, 2009...to the quiz.
1. Myrmica fracticornis undescribed species
2. Tetramorium "sp. E." (formerly, T. caespitum)
3. Lasius neoniger
4. Tapinoma sessile
5. Myrmecina americana
6. Pheidole pilifera
Most of these were straightforward, but the Myrmica and the Lasius required as much luck as skill to pick correctly given what was visible in the photographs. The Lasius is indeed covered with the fine hairs that distinguish L. neoniger from L. alienus, but these are nearly impossible to see against the white backdrop.
Identifying Myrmica to species requires examining the shape of the base of the…
awild | May 31, 2009The following ants are all found in my yard here in suburban Illinois. What are they?
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
I'll post answers on Tuesday. If you're lost, try here.
awild | May 29, 2009A new exhibit at the Smithsonian in Washington, D. C. opens this Saturday and runs through October. The displays will include a live leafcutter colony, photographs by Mark Moffett, and casts of real nests by Walter Tschinkel. Should be worth checking out if you're in the area. Details here.
awild | May 29, 2009Who says we can't have both beetles and Pheidole on Friday?
A South African Sap Beetle (Nitidulidae) reacts to a swarm of Pheidole megacephala by retracting its legs and antennae, leaving little exposed but smooth chitin. The ants have difficulty finding anything their mandibles can grab, even if they have the tank-like beetle surrounded.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 28, 2009Aptinoma antongil Fisher 2009
Brian Fisher has a paper out in Zootaxa this week describing a pair of new ant genera from Madagascar. Aptinoma and Ravavy are small ants in the subfamily dolichoderinae related to Tapinoma and Technomyrmex. Apparently, the backstory on these new ants is that ongoing genetic research from the Ant Tree of Life project revealed some Malagasy specimens to be rather distantly related to any of the previously described genera. On closer morphological inspection, Fisher found several differences that allow for the new genera to be reliably diagnosed.
Yet another…
awild | May 28, 2009
A queen and worker Argentine ant, Linepithema humile, pose for a photograph near Córdoba, Argentina.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 26, 2009
Ectatomma brunneum, Argentina
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 25, 2009My apologies for the lack of posts. Life and work are conspiring this week to make blogging difficult. In the meantime, here's what's new in ants on the internet:
Roberto Keller explains the clypeus.
PLoS One reports that ant-dispersed plant lineages diversify more rapidly than ant-free relatives.
FlickR user Rundstedt B. Rovillos posts a lovely photo of an Oecophylla foundress.
Myrmecological News publishes a set of new articles today.
The Ant Farm Forum poses a challenging Name That Ant.
bleimanb | May 21, 2009It seems like we've been covering zombie bugs a lot lately. The newest story comes from Texas, where researchers are trying out a new form of pest control on invasive fire ants: using parasitic flies to lay eggs in the ants brains, zombify them, and then explode their heads with emerging larvae. Seems reasonable.
We're under attack!
Researchers at Texas A&M's AgriLife Extension Service in Overton, in East Texas are experimenting by releasing four different species of phorid flies (a native predator of fire ants from their native South America) into fire ants' new habitats. The flies…
awild | May 20, 2009
I photographed this weird...sluggy thing, I guess you could say, in an ant nest in subtropical Argentina.Â
Ten points to the first person who picks what it is.
awild | May 20, 2009
In California, the pesty ant that invaded our kitchen was the Argentine ant (Linepithema humile). In Tucson, we had South American rover ants (Brachymyrmex patagonicus). Here in Illinois, our kitchen ant is a native species, Tapinoma sessile. At any given moment we probably have two or three wandering about our countertops.
The common name for this small brown insect is the Odorous House Ant, a reference to both the strong blue-cheesy odor these ants emit when crushed and to their habit of foraging indoors for food. They don't normally nest indoors, though, they prefer to be outdoors…
awild | May 19, 2009I took my shiny new Canon 50D out for a spin this weekend, and along the railroad tracks I found a worthy myrmecological subject: Crematogaster feeding at the swollen nectaries of an Ailanthus Tree of Heaven. Ailanthus is an introduced Asian tree that's gone weedy across much of North America. Our local ants don't seem to mind, though, it's extra snack food for them.
awild | May 15, 2009Pheidole rosae, major worker, Entre Rios, Argentina
At the nest entrance
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | May 13, 2009...well, not really. But an exchange I had at Photo Synthesis with Andrew Bleiman of Zooillogix got me thinking about all the different insects that have charmingly envenomated me at one time or another.
Myrmecia piliventris, Australia
So I'm starting a meme called Things That Have Stung Me. The rules are simple:
List all the things that have stung you.
Bites don't count.
Pass the meme to 3 or more other bloggers you suspect have also been well-zinged.
Here are mine.
Things that have stung me:
Ants:
Pachycondyla verenae
Pachycondyla harpax
Pachycondyla villosa
Pachycondyla stigma…
awild | May 11, 2009
A bold paper by Rob Dunn et al in Ecology Letters is making news this month.  Dunn and an impressive list of coauthors pool observations of ant species richness from more than 1000 sites worldwide, finding that southern hemisphere habitats consistently support more species than their equivalents in the northern hemisphere. The pattern appears to be predicted primarily, but not entirely, by climate.
These results strike me as intuitively correct, and I suspect anyone who has collected ants in both hemispheres will agree. Brazil's fauna is spectacularly rich. That of Oklahoma, less so…
awild | May 11, 2009Here's an old shot from the files:
Formica aerata- the grey field ant- California
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper