Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
Tourists flock to Amazonian jungle lodges hoping to find monkeys, toucans, and jaguars, but most of the animals they see are insects. Especially, ants. The Amazon region contains more than 1,000 species, many still formally undescribed, and they basically run the place. The leafcutter ants and their fungi are the forest’s premiere herbivores, the army [...]
An ambitious Cyphomyrmex forager carries a piece of insect frass back to the nest. These ants feed exclusively on a fungus that grows on the bits of detritus they gather. (Mindo, Ecuador). photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x lens on a Canon EOS 7D ISO 100, f/13, 1/250 sec, diffuse twin flash
One of the largest ants in the Amazon basin: photo details: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 7D ISO 200, f/16, 1/250 sec, diffuse overhead flash
Bug bloggers are not exactly a large community. If I were optimistic I’d say that there are 100 of us around the world. Maybe. So it’s not as though I expect to run into another bug blogger in any given random place. Random, say, like an Ecuadorian cloud forest: While Mrs. Myrmecos and I were [...]
I give numerous reasons for why I like ants, but chief among them is my fascination with just how many ways there are to be an ant. Taxonomists have formally named some 13,000 ant species and expect to discover at least another 5,000 or so. There are ants smaller than the head of a pin and [...]
Hey look! A bug! But there’s more to this insect than meets the eye. Check out Mr. Membracid in side view:
Say “Weaver Ant” to an ant enthusiast and I guarantee you most will imagine the charismatic genus Oecophylla from tropical Africa, Asia, and Australia. Even wikipedia would agree. But the American tropics also has weaver ants. Several species, in fact. Wikipedia’s muddled definition aside, weavers are tree-dwelling ants that bind living leaves together with larval silk. [...]
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens Canon EOS 7D ISO 100, f/13, 1/250th sec backlit with handheld strobe slight fill with diffuse foreground strobe
Sometimes I’m glad not to be a grasshopper: Nothing freaks out the arachnophobe in me more than social spiders. One of the more common arachnids in tropical forests, these spiders spin communal webs with hundreds or thousands of individuals. photo details: Canon EF 100mm f/2.8 macro lens Canon EOS 7D (top) ISO 400 f/11 1/250 [...]
The genus Inga contains hundreds of woody plant species in the American tropics, from tall canopy trees to diminutive understory shrubs. All species sport cup-like nectaries on their leaves, presumably an offering to ants whose presence dissuades herbivores. Because Inga hosts a reliable entourage of happily sedentary ants, its nectaries are perhaps the easiest place [...]
A personal blog 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? Email alwild [at] myrmecos.net; or follow @Myrmecos on Twitter.
