Myrmecology
esiegel | February 24, 2013"When you have seen one ant, one bird, one tree, you have not seen them all." -E.O. Wilson
Sure, there are entire worlds within our world that we never even give a second thought to. There's an entire subterranean Universe to explore, and you might get the feeling to do it if you listen to Mecca Bodega's rumbling sound, in
Underground.
But as soon as those tiny critters begin invading your house, the wonder goes right out the window. In fact, you probably haven't thought much about them in terms other than how-to-poison-them in a long time.
Image credit: © 2013 Cool Exotic Pets.
But as a…
awild | April 5, 2010[a guest post by myrmecologist Andrea Lucky]
Andrea & her intrepid field team in New Guinea
It was a dark and stormy night...
...actually, it was a dark and stormy morning. The dawn of the 7th day of ceaseless frigid rain to be precise, and I was reminiscing about the grand old days one week before when the sun emerged and for a glorious 10 minutes it was warm enough to splash some water on my arms, legs and neck and wipe away the accumulated grime that is synonymous with field work. I wondered if that lovely burst of sunshine would ever come again (no, it wouldn't), and every time I…
awild | April 1, 2010
Myrmicocrypta camargoi Sosa-Calvo & Schultz 2010
Brazil
The world's ant fauna continues to yield new treasures. Myrmicocrypta camargoi, described in a new paper by Jeffrey Sosa-Calvo & Ted Schultz, is the largest species in this fungus-growing genus.
source: Sosa-Calvo, J., Schultz, T.R. 2010. Three Remarkable New Fungus-Growing Ant Species of the Genus Myrmicocrypta (Hymenoptera: Formicidae), with a Reassessment of the Characters That Define the Genus and Its Position within the Attini. Annals of the Entomological Society of America 103(2):181-195.
doi: 10.1603/AN09108
artwork by…
awild | March 31, 2010Leptomyrmex darlingtoni, Australia
A big day for ant evolution! The Ant Tree of Life research group (AToL) has published their dolichoderine phylogeny in the journal Systematic Biology.
Dolichoderines are one of the big ant subfamilies, comprising just under ten percent of the world's ant species. These are dominant, conspicuous ants noted for having ditched the heavy ancestral ant sting and armor in favor of speed, agility, and refined chemical weaponry. Most dolichoderines live in large colonies with extensive trail networks, and they fuel their frenetic lifestyle through copious…
awild | March 13, 2010
Theodore Pergande (1840-1916)
Over 12,000 ant species have been described since the inception of modern taxonomy 252 years ago. From Formica rufa Linneaus 1758 to Paraparatrechina gnoma LaPolla & Cheng 2010, where did all those names come from?
Now it's easier than ever to find out. The Global Ant Project is assembling a biography for each of the 917 people responsible for our current taxonomy. These are the researchers who have defined the species, assembled them into genera and subfamilies, supplied the latin names, and refined the work of their predecessors.
Efforts like these help…
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 | January 20, 2010Let me preface this post by saying that Christian Peeters is one of my absolute favorite myrmecologists. If lost in a remote African jungle and stalked by ravenous leopards, for example, Christian is the first ant guy I'd pick to help get me out of the predicament.
Having said that, this paper in Insectes Sociaux is so bad I nearly gouged my eyes out and ran around in little circles screaming and flailing my arms.
Nonetheless there exist extant ants with relatively simple societies, where size-polymorphic workers and large queens are absent. Recent phylogenies show that the poneroid…
awild | January 9, 2010
Nylanderia guatemalensis
What are ant taxonomists buzzing about this week?*
Well. A hot new paper by John LaPolla, Seán Brady, and Steve Shattuck in Systematic Entomology has killed Paratrechina as we know it.Â
Nearly all those adorable, hairy little formicines we knew as Paratrechina- like the phantom sand ant and the rasberry crazy ant- have been pulled out and placed in a resurrected genus Nylanderia. All that remains of Paratrechina is but a single species, the fabled Black Crazy Ant Paratrechina longicornis. Which, incidentally, is the species in this blog's header photo.
Here's…
awild | January 8, 2010ANT COURSE 2010
Danum Valley Field Centre, Sabah Borneo, August 16 - 26
DEADLINE FOR APPLICATION: April 1, 2010
click here for application form
COURSE OBJECTIVES. â ANT COURSE is designed for systematists, ecologists, behaviorists, conservation biologists, and other biologists whose research responsibilities require a greater understanding of ant taxonomy and field research techniques. Emphasis is on the identification of the ant genera and species occurring in Southeast Asia. Lectures will include background information on the ecology, life histories and evolution of ants. Field trips…
awild | December 9, 2009In reading various web reactions to news that the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act contained nearly 1 million dollars for ant research at Arizona State University and the University of Arizona, it seems there's a lot of confusion about how something like ant behavior winds up getting a stimulus check. Here's an explanation.
Our starting point is the observation that stimulus has to be fast to be effective. The obvious problem is that we all know how fast goverment usually acts, and if the government were to put out a call for stimulus proposals with a full process of review and…
awild | November 17, 2009
The chaotic evolution of colony size in ants. (Tree re-analyzed from Brady et al 2006, colony data taken from Hoelldobler & Wilson 1990 and other sources)
This tree depicts how colony size evolves in ants. The purple/blue colors represent small colonies with only a few to a few dozen ants, while the yellows and oranges represent species with enormous colonies of tens or hundreds of thousands of individuals. What's exciting about this rainbow-colored figure?
If you were expecting ant evolution to be an inexorable march towards larger and more complex societies, this tree should…
awild | November 12, 2009
Ross Crozier last week at the Chicago Field Museum
I learned this morning that pioneering ant biologist Ross Crozier has passed away. This is terrible news, and entirely unexpected.
Ross- a soft-spoken Australian- ushered social insects into the age of molecular biology. He karyotyped hundreds of ant species. He sequenced the honeybee mitochondrial genome. He documented natural selection in ant immune genes. He studied colony structure in termites, and speciation in ants. There's almost nothing in social insect genetics that Ross didn't do first.
Ross's passing is quite a shock-…
awild | November 10, 2009
An oversized tyrannosaur photo-bombs the Global Ant Project group portrait, November 5-7 2009 at the Chicago Field Museum (photo by Darolyn Striley).
Last week I attended a conference ambitiously titled "Global Ant Project synthesis meeting II". Partly, I went out of curiosity about what this "Global Ant Project" might be. But mostly, I went for the chance to catch up with old myrmecological friends, eavesdrop on the latest ant gossip, and visit Chicago's fabulous Field Museum of Natural History. How'd it go? Mission accomplished on all counts. You can see my photos of the event…
awild | October 21, 2009
Click to Gigapan this Linepithema ant head
Gigapan is a technology that stitches together hundreds of individual images to form a massive single image. It's hard to appreciate its power from just the small SEM image shown above, but if you click on the photo you'll be able to zoom to a marvelous level of detail.
More clickable gigapan ants below the fold.
awild | October 21, 2009Over at the Ant Farm Forum they're having another round of Name That Ant:
the mystery ant - photo by forum participant 'Harpegnathos'
Lodge your answer here.
While I'm on the topic of the Ant Farm Forum... The internet strikes me as a tremendous boon for ant enthusiasts. Anting is not one of those hobbies like, say, model rocketry or gardening, with sufficient interest to sustain local clubs that meet regularly. So ant people have historically carried out their activities in solitude.
Now that the internet allows ant enthusiasts from around the world to interact, it's probably much…
awild | October 7, 2009
One of the oddest results from the Ant Tree of Life phylogeny was the recovery of a close relationship between Monomorium and Myrmicaria, two rather different looking ants.
But it all seems a little more plausible when looking at the Monomorium infuscum specimen recently uploaded to antweb. I know this is just a gut impression, but still. If M. infuscum sprouted spines and lost a few antennal segments it'd be most of the way there.
awild | September 23, 2009James Trager writes in this week with a request and a photo:
I have been interested in Polyergus (âAmazon antsâ, see here) since childhood, when I first had the good fortune to observe them on summer afternoons in northern New Mexico. After decades of intermittent field observations and microscopic examination of specimens of these ants from various parts of the USA and Eurasia, and various interactions with other researchers on this group, I came to the conclusion that a taxonomic revision of the group is necessary.
Some background: Linda Goodloe, in her 1986 City University of NY…
awild | September 17, 2009Marek Borowiec writes in this morning with a request for ant specimens from the subfamily Cerapachyinae:
Dear Colleagues,
I am currently working on the ant subfamily Cerapachyinae. I plan to work on both alpha-taxonomy as well as phylogeny of these ants. In the course of my study I will need as much material as possible.
In addition to the traits already looked upon by other researchers, I want to explore as many new characters as possible, and so I plan to take a close look at both adults and immatures, the structure of metapleural, metatibial and metatarsal glands, sting apparatus,…
awild | June 16, 2009As in the previous quiz, these ants are all found in Illinois:
#1
#2
#3
#4
#5
#6
Answers will be posted on Thursday.
awild | June 9, 2009Josh King writes in with the following:
Subject: Arthropod specimens available for analysis from large experiments in long-leaf pine forests.
We have material from 8100 pitfalls available for anyone (including enterprising students or post-docs) interested in studying the effect of disturbance or fire ant invasion on ground-dwelling arthropods in a variety of habitats.Â
We simply do not have the time to sort this material any time in the near future and we would prefer it not languish on a shelf for decades. The majority of this experimental work was conducted in and near the Apalachicola…