Amphizoa insolens - trout stream beetle
California
Amphizoa are among the more enigmatic insects I’ve photographed. These dime-sized beetles are found only in the mountains of China and western North America, a disjunct distribution paralleled by a number of interesting taxa, including the giant redwoods. All six species are predaceous and aquatic, living in debris and under stones in fast-running creeks. Because adults have a morphology suggestive of the terrestrial ground beetles, some researchers have proposed that Amphizoa represents an evolutionary transition between terrestrial and aquatic habitats.
photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon D60
f/13, 1/125 sec, ISO 100, twin flash bounced off white board
Nick Cave and the Bad Seeds is another Aussie band that has made it into my regular rotation. Nick Cave was recently interviewed by Terry Gross, where we learn that his parentage includes a librarian and an English teacher. This may explain the sophistication of his lyrics. In any case, I like it.
The beetle family Phengodidae is odd any way you look at it. The adult female (not pictured) is larviform, which means she never loses her grub-like appearance as she grows into sexual maturity. She has no wings and no long antennae. But she does bioluminesce, and that gives the family their common name: Glow-worms.
In stark contrast to their grubby counterparts, male phengodids are delicate creatures, adapted for dispersal and mating. The male pictured above flew to a blacklight behind my house. I don’t see phengodids all that often at the light, but they are easy to spot when they arrive. The distinctive feathery antennae are a dead giveaway.
photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon 20D
f/13, 1/250 sec, ISO 100, twin flash diffused through tracing paper
Cory Unruh describes a new species of scale insect in the genus Crypticeryain this week’s Zootaxa. The diagram above shows a highly stylized version of the back (at left) and underbelly (at right) of the insect, with peripheral illustrations of the various pores, appendages and hairs. Scale insects have such an unusual morphology that the people who work on them have had to create a unique system for keeping track of their various characters. Most entomologists- myself included- require additional training to make sense of it.
Like all scale insects, Crypticerya bursera is a specialized plant feeder. The young insects have longer legs and are motile, but adult females become motionless blobs that plug into the phloem and drink sap. This species is known from a single locality in Baja California, where it was collected from an elephant tree (Bursera microphylla):
If you’re having trouble filling that bare wall over your desk, the Bohart Museum of Entomology has just the thing: a new line of insect posters. The invasive ant poster above was designed by Fran Keller from auto-montage images by Eli Sarnat, Jasmine Joseph, and Anna Lam.
Myrmecos.net is 5 years old. It has grown from a few dozen photographs to about 4,000, and in recent years 1,500 people visit the site every day. In spite of the site’s high profile, myrmecos has not changed in any fundamental way since it first went online in 2003 (archived versions are accessible here). The pages are simple 1990’s technology, hand-written in html. There are no underlying databases, just scores of flat files stored in folders. If you do any web design you can imagine what a pain in the behind it is to manage a static site with thousands of individual html files.
It is time for an overhaul.
The Web 2.0 reincarnation of myrmecos will be built around a database, and it will be done professionally. Beyond that we have not yet settled on any details. To make the best of the redesign, I want the new version to incorporate suggestions from users of the site, so I’m especially keen to get feedback from you, the reader.
If you are a user of myrmecos.net, I would really, really appreciate hearing about what features you’d like in the new site. We are working from a blank slate, so we should be able to implement almost anything. Here are some possibilities:
Menu navigation
Slide show gallery views
Dynamic page generation from keywords
Comments
RSS feeds
Automated image licensing
A shopping cart/store
More direct interaction or data sharing with antweb, antbase, and other biodiversity sites
New color schemes/artistic designs
Any of your ideas that might make myrmecos easier to use
If you have database or web design experience I would also like to hear from you. I have been in contact with several programmers/designers over the last few months, but I’ve not yet finalized a contract with anyone for the job. If this project appeals to you, or if you just have relevant words of advice, drop me a line.
Jo-anne has made a project of reorienting me towards a more Australian temperament. Her tactics are subtle but persistent. If I send her off to the video store, for instance, she comes home with some Aussie movie or another.
The most insidious of her methods includes buying CDs of Australian bands and playing them until they sink into my subconscious. These are hit or miss. I’ve not become a big You am I fan. But now and again Jo-anne finds something that takes hold. One of my new favorites is Missy Higgins:
