MYRMECOS

Sunday Night Movie: Cane Toads (The Conquest)

myrmecos — Mon, 21 May 2012 00:39:46 +0000

The trailer for the 2010 documentary horror film:

A hopper that mimics its ant associates

myrmecos — Fri, 18 May 2012 22:20:17 +0000

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 up.

Sunday Night Movie: Acacia Ants and Ant Acacias

myrmecos — Sun, 13 May 2012 23:42:39 +0000

I could do without the patronizing narration, but National Geographic’s footage of Pseudomyrmex acacia-ants is worth your time:

A brief blog break…

myrmecos — Thu, 10 May 2012 17:12:26 +0000

…for the month of May. Don’t worry- it’s for good myrmecological cause.

I may stop in to give a brief dispatch now and again, but I can’t guarantee it.

In the meantime, behave yourselves.

Multiple Choice

myrmecos — Fri, 04 May 2012 02:07:48 +0000

Blogging has been slow this week as, among other things, I’m readying the final exam for Insects & People. Here is an excerpt from a practice exam administered earlier this evening:

In the absence of posting, I figured I’d at least offer some multiple-choice questions.

Not enough ants

myrmecos — Tue, 01 May 2012 22:59:13 +0000

It occurs to me that I don’t post nearly enough ants.

Click “continue reading” and scroll down. That should take care of it.

New ant genera from Madagascar and Africa

myrmecos — Tue, 01 May 2012 15:49:17 +0000

Please welcome the shiny new ant genera Tanipone and Vicinopone to the world’s ant fauna!

Tanipone aversa holotype worker (Madagascar)

Vicinopone conciliatrix (Ghana)

The new genera emerge from a detailed taxonomic study of the Malagasy and Afrotropical genus Simopone, published this week by Barry Bolton and Brian Fisher in an open-access monograph in Zootaxa.

source: Bolton B., Fisher B.L. 2012. Taxonomy of the cerapachyine ant genera Simopone Forel, Vicinopone gen. n. and Tanipone gen. n. (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Zootaxa 3283: 1–101.

Meanwhile, over at Compound Eye…

myrmecos — Tue, 01 May 2012 14:21:43 +0000

A few recent posts on my SciAm blog:

When an artist copies a photograph, who gets the credit?

6 sources of free images for science blogging

Experimenting with off-camera light

Sunday Night Movie: Andrew Bird’s Imitosis

myrmecos — Mon, 30 Apr 2012 00:27:18 +0000

Because robot bugs, that’s why.

(h/t Polly Nator, who pointed me to the video for a song I already loved)

Camponotus impressus, a cork-headed ant

myrmecos — Thu, 26 Apr 2012 23:59:03 +0000

One of Josh King’s lab ants at the University of Central Florida. The blunt head serves as a living door to this species’ twig nests.

photo details:
Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 7D
ISO 200 f/13 1/250 sec
diffuse twin flash