Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
It’s very nearly Friday, and I am late in answering the mystery of the squashed mosquito. What was it?
10 points to Jason C for his correct answer of Psorophora ciliata. I’m only 80% confident that P. ciliata is the right species, so I am also awarding 5 points to Catherine Nalen for the congener Psorophora howardii. I don’t think the latter is quite hairy enough but I can’t rule it out.
weaver ant pupae
In the news this morning, a story about people who make a tidy living hunting weaver ant brood:
Tradition dictates that a Javanese man must possess five things to be a real man: a house, a woman, a horse, a dagger and a caged bird. The obsession with birds has spread to other ethnic groups, too, and these days, all kinds of birds are trapped and sold to satisfy the demand for them.
The market for pet birds has also created a market for bird food, including the larvae and pupae of red weaver ants, a favorite among insect-eating birds. Called krotoin Javanese, the ant larvae and pupae are actually eaten by people in Thailand and the Philippines, and they are said to taste creamy. In Java, however, the dish is reserved as a treat for captive songbirds.
In Javanese villages, kroto hunting can be a source of regular income.
Read the whole thing.
Note the suggestion that the practice may be altering local ecology:
Last year when the country was hit by itchy caterpillar attacks, experts speculated that the caterpillar population had exploded in part because the weaver ants’ larvae and pupae were being collected too heavily. Some districts, like Karanganyar in the Solo region, considered banning kroto collectors.
Several years ago in Florida, I was bitten one evening by a mosquito. I promptly swatted her and fed the remains to hungry Pheidole ants.
We do a lot of ant mysteries, so let’s mix it up this week and go for the fly instead. So: what is the mosquito?
I will award points to the first person to correctly pick the genus (5 pts) and species (5 pts).
The cumulative points winner for the month of January will take home their choice of 1) any 8×10-sized print from my photo galleries, or 2) a guest post here on Myrmecos.
Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus (Harrietville, Victoria, Australia)
What is my favorite ant?
Turtle ants, of course.
Wait! No. Army ants! I think. Or, maybe leafcutters. This is a hard question.
Regardless of my paralyzing myrmecological indecision, one ant that always lurks near the top of my favorites list is Leptomyrmex, the charmingly slender spider ant of Australia and New Guinea. I was fortunate to cross paths with several species (L. unicolor, L. ruficeps, and L. erythrocephalus) during my recent visit to Australia. Check out the photos here:
Leptomyrmex, among ants, is extraordinarily difficult to photograph. They are fast, they are shy, and their long appendages make the choice of focal point even more important than usual. I spent a great deal of time getting just 9 workable new photos. I hope you enjoy them.
The following is a guest post by Tucker Lancaster of the Blue Egg Blog.
Flipping through the glossy pages of a Bioquip catalogue, you would think that entomology is a rather expensive pursuit. But, it doesn’t have to be. As an amateur entomologist, I’ve never had money to blow on equipment. Therefore, the majority of my collecting arsenal is home made from commonly available materials. I thought that I would share some of my creations here in the hope that will help others plunge into this exciting hobby without breaking the bank.
Let’s start with collecting equipment. When gathering small insects, such as ants, it is all to easy to accidentally squish your prize. That’s where an aspirator comes in. Though this is not a particularly expensive tool to buy, it is possible to make your own.
As you can see, the mechanism is quite simple. Two pieces of clear vinyl tubing are stuck through holes in the lid of a small jar or vial, and one is covered with a thin piece of cotton to prevent you from inhaling the insects you’re collecting. I used a small piece of cotton from a makeup remover pad, but something thinner would be easier to suck through. For example, fine wire screen or a square from an old pair of tights might work better. Just make sure the holes are small enough! To use it, you point the smaller tube at an insect and suck hard on the other. This pulls your query through the tube and into the vial, where they can be easily collected. This design was inspired the aspirator sold by Bioquip, and operates on the same principles.
Next up is one of my favorites, the Berlese Funnel. Continue reading →
An ad for Aussie underwear:
Can anyone name the ant species?
Prionomyrmex janzeni, Baltic Amber (image: antweb.org)
The following announcement was sent in by Paleomyrmecologist Vincent Perrichot:
Regular users of Antweb may have noticed that a project named Fossil ants was added some months ago (www.antweb.org/fossil.jsp); a few technical issues prevented the imaged species to show up correctly, however, resulting in only a few visible species fully illustrated. These problems have been fixed and the full catalogue is now available online, with 68 out of the 661 fossil species imaged so far. Additional photographs will be added with time, pending the access to the specimens (most of species are known from a single specimen housed in many different institutions). So here it’s also a call to curators who have fossil ants in the collections of their institute, or researchers who described an extinct species, to send me high resolution photographs free of copyright to be uploaded online. When possible with a fossil, I try to follow the standard used on Antweb for recent species, i.e. providing the profile, dorsal, and head views, together with a closer view of the wing for alates, and the labels. So folks, any help is welcome, you will be credited for your photographs of course!
In addition to the taxonomic history provided from Bolton Catalogue, you will find information on the depository of the known material and the distribution of the species (sometimes differing from that given by Bolton in taxonomic history because he considered the age in the original description while the dating of some fossil deposits has been updated since then – Ex: Florissant, Colorado, was originally dated as Oligocene, but is now Late Eocene). Hope this new tool will help neontologists to increasingly consider fossils in their studies!
-Vincent Perrichot
In response to SOPA, I am releasing some of my photographs to the public domain.
Like this image? It’s now yours.
A personal weblog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.
Myrmecos- derived from the ancient greek word for "ant"- hosts Alex's musings about these and other little creatures that share our planet.
Questions? Comments? Email alwild [at] myrmecos.net
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