Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
See how long you can make it through the photo caption with a straight face: Ant no love like a mother’s love…A mother ant shows off her strength and agility as she plays with her young child and lifts it above her head. The yellow ant stood on a delicate purple flower and balanced on [...]
I spotted this geographically-challenged mural at the Heathrow Airport Starbucks:
The Argentine Ant Linepithema humile hasn’t been known under the name Iridomyrmex humilis since 1992, when Steve Shattuck modernized dolichoderine taxonomy. Since then, every scientific study on this ant has been published under the new combination. Why would anyone trust a pest control company that hasn’t read the technical literature on an important pest in the [...]
[I've been getting plenty of fan mail recently. So I thought I might stem the tide by reposting The Worst of Myrmecos, from 2008] I have thousands of absolutely awful photographs on my hard drive. I normally delete the screw-ups on camera as soon as they happen, but enough seep through that even after the [...]
(via Jack Longino & Michael Branstetter)
It occurs to me that an objective measure of the amount of Fail in a given misidentification could be useful. I propose the following: A = the actual taxon of the pictured organism B = the taxon as misidentified T = the number of million years since A and B shared a common ancestor* H [...]
I bet those drones really hurt, too…
Today’s breaking news in Ant Science is this: Newly discovered pieces of amber have given scientists a peek into the Africa of 95 million years ago, when flowering plants blossomed across Earth and the animal world scrambled to adapt. Suspended in the stream of time were ancestors of modern spiders, wasps and ferns, but the [...]
Seriously, is there a name for the disorder whereby people think everything with wings is a honeybee?
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.
