Posted in Ants, tagged art, glass, Parasites on March 16, 2010| 11 Comments »
You may remember Wesley Fleming, the glass artist I blogged about last year. It seems he’s accomplished a remarkable new piece: a leafcutter ant infected with a parasitic Cordyceps fungus. As far as I know this is the first Cordyceps ever created from glass.
If you’d like to see it in person, this and some of Fleming’s other pieces will be on display at the Racine Art Museum this summer.
What is Cordyceps, you ask? Watch:
Posted in fun, tagged art on December 13, 2009| 5 Comments »
Posted in Ants, fun, tagged Ants, art, garage doors on September 26, 2009| 3 Comments »
A: Check your house for any signs of ant-art. If, for instance, your garage sports a giant blue Azteca, you might have developed a myrmecological fixation.
On the other hand, if you consider yourself an ant-lover but lack any obvious ant adornments, you’re falling behind. Pick up some paint and get to work!
(This garage belongs to myrmecologists Ivette Perfecto and John Vandermeer, who sent in the picture. Thanks guys!)
Posted in Ants, tagged art, creativity, fighting ants on August 5, 2009| 2 Comments »
Here’s a novel use for an ant photo. German designer Beat Hintermann induced a party of wedding guests to individually color in squares from one of my images of fighting Odontomachus. The pieces were then assembled as a gift to the happy couple. Both, I’m told, study the aggressive interactions of ants.
Love can arise in the oddest of circumstances.
Posted in fun, Science, tagged art, Bees, bombus, bumblebees, dna, double helix, entomology, genetics, Insects, Photography on March 5, 2009| 8 Comments »
This photo was ultimately rejected for a journal cover (it was the wrong shape!) but I shot it to accompany a research article that used museum specimens of midwestern bumblebees to compare current levels of genetic diversity with previous decades. Since this image won’t appear in print anytime soon, I thought I’d share it here instead.
photo details: Canon 35mm f2.0 prime lens on a Canon EOS 20D
ISO 200, 1/125 sec, f/5, indirect strobe
Posted in Ants, tagged art, glass, Insects, scultpure on February 26, 2009| 3 Comments »
A comment left on this blog last week alerted me to the sublime glasswork of artist Wesley Fleming. Wow. Not only are the pieces aesthetically stunning, they are also largely anatomically accurate. Legs attached to the right spots, tarsal segments counted out, tibial spurs in place.
If you have a few minutes, do yourself a favor and visit Fleming’s gallery.
Posted in Ants, fun, Insect Links, tagged art on October 28, 2008| 1 Comment »
I could spend hours looking at Princess Peppercloud’s playful, stylistic take on the lives of ants. Do yourself a big happy favor and pay the princess a visit.
Myrmecos Blog 