Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
When I first saw the following figure, presented by myrmecologist Chris Schmidt at a social insect conference, the whole room broke into laughter: Pachycondyla, among the most common ants in tropical regions worldwide, turns out to be a motley assortment of unrelated species. While the taxonomy of the world’s 12,000 or so ant species is [...]
As if you needed another reason to attend our BugShot photo workshop in Belize, it seems we’ll have a rather interesting bit of equipment on hand: Cognisys is a Michigan company that makes electronic gadgets for assisting macro and other science photography, and they have a growing reputation for affordable rigs of high build quality. I have [...]
Science is reporting: After 2 years of flogging the need to transform Canada’s National Research Council (NRC) into a toolbox for industry, the Conservative government announced today that the 97-year-old agency is “open for business” under its new philosophy. ‘If Canada is going to continue to compete internationally, we must do it through new ideas, [...]
The media is carrying stories of a study in Science showing that Camponotus workers specialize into three behavioral classes, and that workers tend to move through these roles as they age. This result is interesting, but not terribly surprising as a similar pattern is known in the better-studied honey bees. The reason the paper appears in Science, rather than a more [...]
A quick explainer of ant slave rebellions from the Foitzik lab, which studies them: In life, the ants look like this: Also: Joan Herbers on the cultural implications of “slave-raiding” terminology Protomognathus photos
Those of you familiar with South American ants know the distinction between the two great lineages of leafcutters. Acromyrmex comprises the smaller, stubbier, spinier species, while Atta contains the larger, leggier, and less spiny species. This dichotomy is marked enough even to be recognized in the local vernacular. The Guaraní called the former Akêkê and the latter Ysaú, which Brazilians have [...]
In which insect flight expert Micheal Dickinson explains that, while flies are small, they are anything but simple:
Monarch butterflies- the most iconic of American insects- have declined to perilously low numbers this winter: This is horrific. We’ve lost over 80% of the butterflies. The waning of our monarchs has lead to the inevitable speculations as to the cause. Which is fair enough. But I’d like to point out the ideas are just speculation. No one really [...]
From Henry Reich, the creator of Minute Physics, comes Minute Earth, a new youtube channel devoted to our home planet. Here’s the inaugural video:
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.
