Flies!

My commercial gallery now has flies! Diptera photographs at alexanderwild.com I feel sort of embarassed at how few fly images I have, considering the importance of the group. That’s something I’ll try to remedy as we get into this summer’s photography season.

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Are there more ants in the Southern Hemisphere?

A bold paper by Rob Dunn et al in Ecology Letters is making news this month.   Dunn and an impressive list of coauthors pool observations of ant species richness from more than 1000 sites worldwide, finding that southern hemisphere habitats consistently support more species than their equivalents in the northern hemisphere.  The pattern appears [...]

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Formica aerata

Here’s an old shot from the files: photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60 ISO 100, 1/200 sec, f/13, flash diffused through tracing paper

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Sunday Night Movie: E. O. Wilson on chemical communication

From the NOVA episode “Lord of the Ants“

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My tenure at Photo Synthesis has ended…

…and it was fun. Here are some highlights from the past week: Why do only some ants sting? Competing for space on a fake walnut The case of the Malagasy mystery ants Here’s one bit of information that might be useful for anyone thinking about starting a blog. The ScienceBlogs network- which hosts Photo Synthesis- [...]

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BL Wildlife Portrait Winners

The Burrard-Lucas brothers held a wildlife portait competition, and the results are simply spectacular.  Click here to see the winners.

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Springtime in Urbana

Mayapple Brownfield woods, Urbana, Illinois photo details: Canon 17-40x wide angle lens on a Canon EOS 50D ISO 400, 1/30 sec, f/7.1, leaf backlit with handheld 550ex strobe.

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I’m always amused…

…when my photos are on the radio.

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New Ant Maps!

Benoit Guenard has been hard at work the past couple years compiling broad-scale distribution data for all the world’s ants, and his efforts are now online.  Here they are- global range maps for all the ant genera: http://www.antmacroecology.org/ant_genera/index.html These maps will be a very useful resource, especially if the myrmecological community participates to add new [...]

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The stench of the living

It has long been known that ants recognize their deceased nestmates using the smell of fatty acids that accumulate as the body decomposes.  The chemical signature of deadness helps ants remove the corpses from their midst, keeping a clean and sanitary nest. Indeed, this classic tale of ants and oleic acid is one of E. [...]

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