Alex Wild on insects, science, and photography
You wouldn’t think it safe to mail live Malaria mosquitoes around the world. You wouldn’t, I hope, market MedFly as a fun pet. So why would anyone in their right mind do this? Here is a list of known pest ants for sale by the World of Ants store, based in Germany: Pheidole cf. megacephala [listed [...]
Pest insects can be unpredictable, arriving in unexpected places yet failing to show up in regions where they ought to thrive. The famously defensive Africanized honey bees, for example, took more than a decade to move into Florida after establishing in nearby Texas. Argentine ants (Linepithema humile) are a subtropical species from flood plains in the [...]
Several people have asked about recent news stories covering the “Hairy Crazy Ant” sweeping across the U.S. south. What’s the deal? (AP) NEW ORLEANS – It sounds like a horror movie: Biting ants invade by the millions. A camper’s metal walls bulge from the pressure of ants nesting behind them. A circle of poison stops [...]
If I had to pick the most annoying insect in Illinois it’d be Harmonia axyridis. This lady beetle was introduced to our continent as a control agent for aphids but became a pest in its own right. It consumes not just aphids but all manner of other insects, including beneficials like native lady beetles. Swarms [...]
Anochetus mayri is an ant most North American myrmecologists will not have encountered in the field. This toothy exotic is a small brown insect, less than half a centimeter long, known in the United States only from scattered locations in suburban Florida. I photographed one this summer on a collecting trip to West Palm Beach. [...]
from an interview with Survivor contestant Kelly Sharbaugh: When your name showed up, you looked flabbergasted, shocked, dumbfounded. All of the above. I had no idea that Russell had the idol. When [host Jeff Probst] said my name, I was like. “What just happened? What did I do?” I was so emotional because I was [...]
In the past week: Solenopsis invicta reaches Missouri Wasmannia auropunctata reported on Maui
From my inbox, a postdoctoral job announcement: The Department of Botany, La Trobe University, Melbourne, Australia seeks to appoint a Postdoctoral Fellow to conduct research in Invasion Biology on Christmas Island. Over the last decade, supercolonies of the invasive yellow crazy ant Anoplolepis gracilipes have spread across island rainforest and caused a variety of significant [...]
The port city of Mobile, Alabama holds special significance for students of ant science. Jo-anne and I took a weekend trip down to the gulf coast in January, and as we are both myrmecologists we felt compelled to stop and take a few photographs. Not only is Mobile the childhood home of ant guru E. [...]
There’s been a debate simmering among Argentine Ant researchers about the difference between the ant’s ecology in its native South America and in the introduced populations. The heart of the disagreement is this: is the introduced Argentine ant dominant because its biology changed during introduction, or because the ecologies of the native and introduced ranges [...]
A personal weblog 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? Comments? Email alwild [at] myrmecos.net
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