Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
Today’s breaking news in Ant Science is this: Newly discovered pieces of amber have given scientists a peek into the Africa of 95 million years ago, when flowering plants blossomed across Earth and the animal world scrambled to adapt. Suspended in the stream of time were ancestors of modern spiders, wasps and ferns, but the [...]
[a guest post by myrmecologist Andrea Lucky] 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 [...]
From the brilliant Creature Comforts: [youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ob-OVUoJ1RM]
Prenolepis imparis – winter ant (queen) Urbana, Illinois Photo details: Canon mp-e 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D ISO 100, f13, 1/250 sec, diffused flash
We’re hosting a party for the roller derby girls, so I’m otherwise preoccupied today. Help yourself to some links, though: Mark Moffett, the quintessential National Geographic bug photographer, has a new ant book. Margaret Atwood (yes, that Margaret Atwood), reviews E. O. Wilson’s novel. Carl Zimmer suffers genome fatigue. Mantis shrimp glow in the dark. [...]
Cucujus clavipes – Dendroides fire-colored beetle Illlinois We in the Friday Beetle Department don’t often turn our attention to immature beetles. But these Cucujus clavipes Dendroides larvae are too striking to pass up. Cucujus Dendroides fire-colored beetles inhabit the flat, two-dimensional space under the bark of dead trees. The oddly compressed body helps this insect [...]
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), [...]
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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