Ants as seed dispersers – part 2

Ants are considered beneficial insects for their roles as predators, scavengers, and dispersers of plant seeds.  But when the seeds belong to a pest plant, the ants’ role may change to that of accomplice in an unwanted biological invasion. Moni Berg-Binder, a student in the Suarez lab at the University of Illinois, is studying the [...]

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Friday Beetle Blogging: Podabrus soldier beetle

A Podabrus soldier beetle hides away in the leafy folds of an understory plant in an eastern deciduous forest.  Soldier beetles (family Cantharidae) are predators of other arthropods. photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D ISO 100, 1/250 sec, f13, flash diffused through tracing paper

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Off to Florida

Tomorrow morning I leave for a week at the Archbold Biological Station in the scrublands of central Florida.  Archbold is a magical place filled with charmingly unique plants and animals. I spent a summer there in 1995; this will be my first visit since then.  With any luck I’ll return with a pile of new [...]

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TimeTree of Life

I see that the TimeTree of Life project is now public.  This collaborative project draws on the research of dozens of biologists to estimate the timing of past evolutionary divergences.  The work is available as a book, but the online version has an interactive section that allows the user to name two organisms and get [...]

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Flies

For a change of pace around here.   These were photographed last weekend in Brownfield Woods in Urbana, Illinois.

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DNA Barcoding, an unwilling demonstration

You might recall how much I dislike DNA barcoding. So you can imagine my frustration when, in spite of my best efforts to mount an empirical demonstration of what a waste of time it is, the technique turns out to be extraordinarily useful.  I’ve been processing sequence data all day from the barcoding gene (COI) [...]

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Announcement: Arthropod specimens available for analysis from large experiments in long-leaf pine forests

Josh King writes in with the following: Subject: Arthropod specimens available for analysis from large experiments in long-leaf pine forests. We have material from 8100 pitfalls available for anyone (including enterprising students or post-docs) interested in studying the effect of disturbance or fire ant invasion on ground-dwelling arthropods in a variety of habitats. 

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A review of the new Smithsonian ant exhibit

at the Washington Post: This is the multi-generational public exhibition mentality at work: Every show should have something that makes each member of the family say wow. Ants fight, ants work, ants make things. Ants are just like us: “Text messaging is out, but they have other ways to communicate . . . ” Which [...]

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Ants as seed dispersers – part I

Some plants have come to rely so heavily on ants to spread their seeds about that they offer the insects a tasty treat in exchange for the dispersal service.  Seeds of these species bear a lipid-filled structure called an elaiosome, whose sole function appears to be the attraction of ants.  A recent study suggests that [...]

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A couple mortraits

I sometimes get requests for stylistic pictures of dead ants.  From pest control industry folks, usually.  And I always have to beg off.  Somehow, with my global image library of hundreds of different ant species, I’ve had nothing but live insects.  Dead bugs never held much aesthetic appeal, I guess. Well, Pest Control People.  Just [...]

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