Hey all. I’m briefly back in internet contact, so I thought I’d share a shot from this afternoon. It shows a treehopper species whose adults have the same size, shape, and color of the abdomen of the Cephalotes atratus turtle ants that tend them: Anyone know the species? I’ve not had time to look it [...]
Posts under ‘Ants’
Course Announcement: Ants of the Southwest
You may be familiar with the California Academy of Science’s extremely popular Ant Course, which offers intensive taxonomic training in a once-a-year workshop held at an exotic locale. Ant Course is fantastic, with all its taxonomicky taxonomy and systematicky systematics. What if your anty interests, however, tend more to ecology and behavior? A new course [...]
Benoit Guenard figures out the easiest places to record new ant genera
If you follow myrmecology on the internet, you probably know about Benoit Guenard’s Global Ants database. Benoit has spent years combing disparate biological literature and natural history collections to compile a comprehensive map of where all the 300-some ant genera are known to live. This information is useful in its own right (want to know [...]
The eastern ant cricket Myrmecophilus pergandei
If you look closely when opening large ant nests in the northern hemisphere temperate zone, there is a good chance you’ll see ant crickets. These flattened, wingless insects are kleptoparasites living among ant colonies, stealing food and tricking the ants into feeding them. The common species where we live in the midwest is the eastern [...]
Why I don’t trust the ant traders, exhibit A
Here is the peer-reviewed statement about the fire ant Solenopsis geminata‘s pest potential, written by professional biologists at IUCN: Solenopsis geminata has spread almost world-wide by human commerce. It usually invades open areas but can easily colonise human infrastructure and agricultural systems, such as coffee and sugarcane plantations in hot climates. Its greatest known threats are its [...]
A personal weblog by Illinois-based biologist and photographer Alex Wild.


















