Navel-gazing

Sorry. I've been really, really busy with projects around the house and in the lab. And for the next few days I'll be away at the Global Ant Project meeting in Chicago. Blogging will resume after I return. With any luck there will be plenty of myrmecological gossip and photos to share of the meeting. In the meantime, check out the new ant articles at Myrmecological News.  And don't miss Roberto Keller's discussion of ant eyes.
Before my colleague DrugMonkey gives me more grief about not yet having a CafePress shop (theirs here) to sell and give away paraphernalia related to this blog, I have a question for you, the always erudite and good-looking reader of this humble blog. You see, I don't know exactly what text to put on T-shirts, coffee mugs, and thongs, that properly reflect the name recognition - dare I say, "brand" - of this blog. When I first started the blog on 15 December 2005, I thought that Terra Sigillata was a great name and a great metaphor for the natural product medicines I try to write about…
Malcom Gladwell to aspiring journalists: The issue is not writing. It's what you write about. One of my favorite columnists is Jonathan Weil, who writes for Bloomberg. He broke the Enron story, and he broke it because he's one of the very few mainstream journalists in America who really knows how to read a balance sheet. That means Jonathan Weil will always have a job, and will always be read, and will always have something interesting to say. He's unique. Most accountants don't write articles, and most journalists don't know anything about accounting. Aspiring journalists should stop going…
National Geographic remains the world's premier showcase of nature photography. But I often wonder for how much longer. It is easy to maintain a virtual monopoly on high quality imagery when camera equipment and publishing are expensive and require a highly specialized skill set.  But neither of these things is true anymore.  Professional-quality photo equipment is broadly affordable. And numerous online venues allow anyone with an internet connection to distribute their photos for free. Consider the following fantastic arthropod photographers, all from the galleries of the free online…
they've got nothing on Protanilla. (via antweb)
I nominate Polyergus for the worst common name among ants: Amazon Ants.  I'm cranky this morning and for some reason this has been irking me. I now know they were named for their habit of raiding other ant nests, but I spent much of my childhood thinking they were some exotic tropical creature found in places like the...um...Amazon.  I never thought to look for Polyergus locally.  I was rather confused when, at age 12, I happened on a raid in upstate New York. As it turns out, this is a common holarctic genus.  Polyergus doesn't get anywhere near the real Amazon- it is more at home on…
By request, I have now organized the ant photos by subfamily.  This mimics the arrangement from the old site.  For the smug-muggers out there who want to know how it works, I basically set up an "old journal" gallery and put the genus names and links into the caption box.  I used CSS to set all photos to align right. Also, the Recent Photos feed on my blog (in the right sidebar) has been changed to show new uploads to alexanderwild.com.  That way you can keep an eye on new material as it goes up.  If that's your thing. Finally, for good measure, below the fold is the full ant genus-by-…
I'm forever apologizing for the lack of blog activity.  Sorry.  I know. I owe my vast and loyal readership (Hi Mom!) an explantion.  Behind the scenes here at Myrmecos Industries we are 90% done with a significant overhaul of the ant photo collection.  Essentially, the content of myrmecos.net is moving to the galleries at www.alexanderwild.com, with a significant restructuring of the latter to accomodate an orders-of-magnitude increase in imagery. The process involves a lot of time-intensive tasks like captioning and keywording, as well as retouching older photos and adding in completely…
Here's your chance! Anheuser-Busch has invited consumers to pitch ideas for a Bud TV spot that will run during the Chinese New Year in February 2010, Advertising Age reported Wednesday. The spots must feature ants, which have starred in A-B commercials during the Chinese New Year for the past decade. From five finalists picked Tuesday, judges will name the grand winner, who collects a $14,637 cash prize and gets to help produce the ad.
Here's why blogging of late has been a little...uninspired: Mingus plans his next paw print We're busy with all those projects that are acquired with an old house.  This weekend we are painting the kitchen and dining room.  To the extent that Mingus the Cat will let us.
I will be spending the remainder of July in Arizona without regular internet access.  It is monsoon season in the desert and the insects are at peak activity, so the hiatus now means better photoblogging later. In the meantime, here's one of our local Polyergus: Polyergus montivagus, Illinois
No, I haven't forgotten you all. We're still busy moving to the new house. Blogging will remain slow until we get the internet connected, and given the way that AT&T has managed to botch just about everything else so far I don't know if that will happen any time soon.  (There's really nothing like the sluggish, incompetent service that AT&T provides. But, at least it's overpriced.) If you need an ant fix, click on this for a slide show of Pogonomyrmex harvester ants. Click me.
For reasons that aren't clear to me, but are possibly related to the onset of summer bug season, traffic here at myrmecos blog has surged over the past few weeks.  We're now getting more daily visitors than do my galleries at myrmecos.net. I'd like nothing more than to entertain all the new readers with thoughtful essays and astounding photographs.  But that's not going to happen.  Just the opposite, I'm afraid. The timing of this surge is terrible. You see, we've just bought a house across town and are in the messy process of packing, paperwork, and moving.  The internet will be off for…
Shortly before I left for Florida, my post on the taxonomy of Strumigenys spurred a comment from an anonymous colleague: I wouldnât be so bold as to publish so many evaluations of ideas without the backing of formal peer review. I wouldnât be as concerned about the validity of my criticisms, but rather the perceived validity. Perhaps Iâm hypersensitive to alienating other scientists. I just wouldnât want to be responsible for airing other peopleâs dirty laundry. Iâm not saying that youâre unfair. But I think most people whose work is being reviewed on your site feel that it wonât stand up to…
dawn in the scrub I spent last week in central Florida at the Archbold Biological Station. Archbold preserves 5,000 hectares of Florida sand scrub, some of the last remaining patches of an ecosystem now largely lost to agriculture and strip malls.  The sand scrub is an odd place, a fossil beach from when sea levels were high enough to restrict peninsular Florida to a narrow sandbar.  Water runs right through the coarse sand, leaving the scrub looking much like a desert in spite of regular afternoon rains.  Cacti thrive.  It is a paradoxical place. The scrub is also remarkable for…
I sometimes get requests for stylistic pictures of dead ants.  From pest control industry folks, usually.  And I always have to beg off.  Somehow, with my global image library of hundreds of different ant species, I've had nothing but live insects.  Dead bugs never held much aesthetic appeal, I guess. Well, Pest Control People.  Just for you I've sold out.  Here, at last, is your ex-ant. (Incidentally, this ant wasn't even dead.  It was knocked out with CO2 and walked off 5 minutes later.)
One of the most vociferous debates in taxonomy is over a catchy-sounding concept called DNA barcoding.  Since nearly all organisms carry a version of the COI gene in the mitochondrion, the idea is that the DNA sequence of the gene can serve as a standard identification marker.  A barcode, of sorts.  Of course, the practice only works if species have unique COI sequences.  Which they do, much of the time, and the barcoders consequently have been successful in garnering research money and churning out publications. So what's the problem? There are two major objections.  The first is…
Seriously, is there a name for the disorder whereby people think everything with wings is a honeybee?