Insect Links
awild | April 1, 2008
If you watch this video about a new technology for visualizing insect fossils hidden in opaque amber, pay special attention around 0:36-0:44. There's a brief 3D image of what is clearly a well-preserved sphecomyrmine ant. The clip is excerpted from a detailed demonstration here, showing the insect in all its glory (warning: 57MB!). It's among the most detailed glimpses of a Sphecomyrmine yet.
Why is this ant interesting? Sphecomyrminae is in many respects a classic piece of evidence for the wasp ancestry of ants. It is an extinct Cretaceous subfamily that shows a few characteristics of…
awild | April 1, 2008
If you've been paying attention to cinematography or photography the last few years, you'll undoubtedly have noticed the popularity of a particular grainy, desaturated, slightly surrealistic style. This look was popularized in films like 300 and Saving Private Ryan, and has become commonplace in glamour photography and advertisements for everything from perfume to shoes.
Inexplicably, this high-fashion style has yet to penetrate the ever trendy world of Ant Photography. So last night I conducted some ground-breaking photoshop experimentation and created the above image. I'm pleased with…
awild | March 31, 2008via Google Trends. Blue is ants, red is beetles:
Ants win, even in the face of the beetles' 20-fold species advantage.
That seasonal pattern is striking, no?
awild | March 30, 2008
If you've ever spent time photographing ants the above shot will look familiar: off-frame and out of focus. Because ants are small and speedy, they are among the most difficult insects to photograph. Just capturing an active ant somewhere in the frame can be regarded as an achievement, never mind the more aesthetic concerns of lighting and composition. Yet ants are dominant insects nearly everywhere, and photographers who neglect them are missing out on one of our most important animals. Figuring out how to photograph these tricky insects is well worth the effort. If you can shoot ants,…
awild | March 28, 2008
Rhipicera femorata
Victoria, AustraliaÂ
Here's an insect with exceptional reception: Rhipicera, an Australian Dascilloid beetle. Little is known about the biology of this species, but its North American cousins in the genus Sandalus are Cicada parasites- and there are certainly plenty of Cicadas down under.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon D60
f/13, 1/200 sec, ISO 100
MT24-EX twin flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | March 25, 2008
Mycocepurus smithi, in the fungus garden
An exciting week for ant aficionados! A new study by ant phylogenetics gurus Ted Schultz and Seán Brady provides the first detailed picture of attine evolution. These New World ants have long attracted the attention of biologists because they, like our own species, practice a well-developed form of agriculture. Instead of plants, these ants grow fungi, and their relationship is so specialized that the ants can consume nothing else. Schultz and Brady use data from four nuclear genes, the fossil record, and the biology of extant ants to infer an…
awild | March 24, 2008
Tribolium castaneum - Red Flour Beetle
The genome of the red flour beetle Tribolium castaneum was published today in Nature. This latest insect genome is interesting not for what it says about beetles but for what it says about another model species, the venerable fruit fly. The more we learn about other insect genomes- the honeybee, the mosquito, and now the flour beetle- the more we see that the famed Drosophila fruit fly is an odd little beast. The bee and now the beetle, it turns out, are both rather normal. They share a lot of proteins with mammals, and fish, and other animals we…
awild | March 23, 2008
Rather than blather on about my Easter Sunday, I'll just share a few images from a morning hike in Tucson's Rincon mountains. Winter rains have given way to wildflowers, and in particular the Encelia brittlebush was spectacular.
Prickly pear:
A hoverfly guards his territory:
Pheidole worker ant gathering nectar from a barrel cactus:
Honeypot ants emerging from their nest:
Close-up of Aphaenogaster cockerelli, a common harvester ant:
awild | March 20, 2008
Chauliognathus lecontei - LeConte's Soldier Beetle
Chiricahua Mountains, Arizona
Soldier Beetles are named for their bright colors. Larvae are predaceous, but adults are commonly seen feeding from the nectar and pollen of flowers.
photo details: Canon 100m f2.8 macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/6.3, 1/250 sec, ISO 200
indirect strobe in white box
awild | March 19, 2008
In our front yard we've got a busy nest of Pogonomyrmex rugosus seed harvesting ants. Warming weather brought them out for the first time last week, and every now and again I go out to see what they're up to. Lots of digging, it seems.
Pogonomyrmex is greek for "Bearded Ant", named 150 years ago by Austrian myrmecologist Gustav Mayr for the thick brush of hairs on the underside of the head. Entomologists affectionately refer to these ubiquitous desert insects as "Pogos". What does the beard do?
It's a construction tool, and one that is especially helpful in dry, sandy climates. As anyone…
awild | March 16, 2008
Pheidole creightoni major worker, California
After reading a couple times through Corrie Moreau's hot-off-the-press Pheidole evolution paper, I am pleased to give it a thumbs-up. The paper is behind a subscription barrier, so I have distilled the results into an informal summary:
Pheidole is one of the most important groups of ants. They are distinctive in always having at least two sharply-defined types of worker ants in the nest: minor workers that just sort of look like normal little ants, and the very front-heavy major workers with an enormous head and powerful jaws. Pheidole is…
awild | March 14, 2008
Hololepta Clown Beetle (Histeridae)
Arizona
If Oscars were awarded for Most Aesthetically Pleasing Sculpturing on an Insect, hister beetles would make the short list. Especially Hololepta, which not only shows the trademark histerid shininess but also has a flattened, paper-thin body. Michele Lanan, who collected this beetle for me, noted that it seems designed to inhabit the pages of a book.
In case it isn't obvious from those killer mandibles, Hololepta is predatory. This one was found in a rotting cactus in the Arizona desert, where it likely hunted fly larvae.
photo details: TOP…
awild | March 13, 2008
DEET is the main ingredient in most insect repellents. Slather it on and it's like magic; the mozzies just fly on by. Nothing else is as effective.
In spite of its utility, DEET is pretty nasty stuff. Depending on where you are in the world, you might be healthier just letting the bugs bite. It melts plastic, and I don't even want to think about what it does as it seeps into skin.
So, I was relieved this afternoon to read a report in this week's Science detailing the biochemical secrets behind DEET. Apparently, the chemical blocks an odor co-receptor called OR83b on insect antennae. When…
awild | March 9, 2008
Strumigenys louisianae stalking a springtail
Tucson, Arizona
Non-native species should make a naturalist's skin crawl, but these ornate little trap-jaw ants are a guilty pleasure. Strumigenys louisianae is among the most widespread of the miniature trap-jaw ants, occurring naturally from the southeastern U.S. to northern Argentina. The desert climate in Tucson is too dry for Strumigenys, but they persist in lawns, gardens, and other places in town where irrigation raises the moisture levels. No one knows when or how they arrived, but it is likely the founding colonies stowed away in…
awild | March 7, 2008
Apteroloma caraboides (Agyrtidae) - Snowfield Beetle
California
Why would I waste a prime Friday Beetle Blogging slot on such a drab little beetle? Because Apteroloma caraboides does something really cool. Really cold, even. This species inhabits the edges of high-altitude snowfields. They are found in places like these, in the high Sierra Nevada:
Snowfields are an inhospitable environment for an insect, but one that offers animals with good cold tolerance a unique way to make a living. Apteroloma caraboides cruise the easy pickings of less hardy creatures that fall onto the snow…
awild | February 29, 2008
Out today is a preprint version (subscription only) of Corrie Moreau's Pheidole phylogeny. At first glance this seems a nice piece of work: the evolutionary history of one of the world's most diverse ant genera inferred from 140 species and 5 genes.
This is some extremely cool ant evolution research, and the first salvo from the nascent Pheidole working group. Once I get a chance to digest all 50+ pages I'll post the highlights.
source: Moreau, C. S. 2008. Unraveling the Evolutionary History of the Hyperdiverse Ant Genus Pheidole (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Molecular Phylogenetics and…
awild | February 29, 2008
Lycus net-winged beetles, Arizona
My latest beetle photos are now posted at myrmecos.net.
awild | February 28, 2008
Laccophilus pictus - Predaceous Diving Beetle
Arizona, USA
Here's one of my favorite Arizona insects. Laccophilus pictus is a small diving beetle, less than a centimeter long, that is common in small ponds and streams in the mountains south of Tucson. It's also one of the beetles that we're using as an exemplar taxon for the Beetle Tree of Life project. Very pretty, no?
photo details. Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100
beetle in small aquarium
illuminated with MT-24-EX twin flash
awild | February 28, 2008
Ectatomma parasiticum Feitosa & Fresneau 2008
Mexico
In today's Zootaxa, Feitosa et al describe a workerless social parasite in the ant genus Ectatomma. Like many discoveries, this one was fortuitous. The authors were collecting nests of the common Ectatomma tuberculatum when they noticed that some nests had a number of rather small queens in them. Genetic tests revealed them to be distinct.
Ectatomma parasiticum is a social parasite, using the labor of the host ants to raise more parasites. Although a similarly parasitic lifestyle is known to occur in other ant subfamilies, this…