Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
Argentine Ants have spent the past century following commerce around the world, aggressively subsuming the territories of native ants. However, a study by Meghan Cooling et al out today in Biology Letters reports a dent in the Argentine ant empire: Argentine ants had disappeared from 40 per cent of our sampling sites. In many other [...]
This is the class I am teaching at the University of Illinois next spring: I asked May Berenbaum, who created this class years ago, about the main idea. She explained (paraphrase mine): I want students, 10 years from now, to see a bug on the sidewalk and appreciate it enough not to step on it. [...]
This odd-looking lump is, believe it or not, entomological. What is it? Points will be awarded to the first person to pick the identification, as follows: order (2 pts) family (3 pts) genus/species (5 pts) The cumulative points winner for the month of November will take home their choice of 1) any 8×10-sized print from [...]
Here’s an adorable short video of a carrion fly courtship dance: (via thuso711)
Goodness. Time flies when you’re stuffed with turkey. I suppose I should post the answer to last week’s Mystery DNA before I post this week’s challenge: All ten points go to Ashley Troth, for picking both the species and the stop codons indicating the non-coding nature of the pseudogene. Also, two more points to “µ” [...]
Happy Thanksgiving! *update* And on this day of Thanksgiving, we give thanks to John LaPolla for new taxonomic monographs bringing structure to the ant genus Nylanderia: Generic overview Africa Enjoy it, nerds.
One measure of a predator’s ecological significance is the abundance of strategies prey adopt to avoid being eaten. And how ecologically significant are ants? They are enough of a problem to web-building spiders that the arachnids impregnate their webs with ant-deterring 2-pyrrolidinone: …ants are rarely reported foraging on the webs of orb-weaving spiders, despite the [...]
A news story from Australia this morning reminds us how most pest ants move around the world: Fire ants have been found in a box of mining equipment shipped from the US to Queensland’s Western Downs, sparking fears the deadly ants may have spread. Staff at a Roma mining company found the fire ants at [...]
Here’s a snippet of DNA sequence from a mystery insect: ATACATGACTATTTTCTCTTCAAGATTCTAATTCACCTACGTATGATTTAATA ATTTTTTTCCATGATTTTGCTATAATTATTTTAACTTTTATTACAATCTTAATT TTATTTATTACACTTAGATTAATATCTAATCAATTTATTCACCGATTTTTATT AGAAAACCAAACAATTGAAATTGTATGAACTGTCCTTCCTATGTTTATCCTC ATTTCTATGGCTATCCCCTCAATTAAAGTACTTTATCTTACTGATGAAATTTT TAATGTTAACCTTACTGTTAAGGCTCTTGGTCACCAATGATACTGACTTTT This DNA is interesting because, although it has recognizable structure, it is not a gene. I will award 8 Myrmecos points to the first person who can explain- with reference to particular features of the sequence- how I know [...]
This blog has gotten heavy of late. I think it is time for pretty beetles: photo details: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 20D ISO 100, f/9, 1/200 sec indirect strobe in a white box
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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