Insect Picture of the Day

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Andrew Lin strikes again! This time, with ants.

Now, I know what you’re thinking. “It’s ants, Dave. Actually it’s mostly dirt. This isn’t even a particularly interesting—”

Okay, let me just stop you right there. See, this is why you need to be looking at the big picture.

No, I mean literally. Go click on the link to the big picture. They’re just ants, right? They go in and out of their hole and…

…and that one has wings.

Is it a male preparing for a mating flight? Is it a queen who has not yet shed her wings? Is it a very confused wasp?

Let’s use SCIENCE! to find out, shall we? A little zoom and enhance action is in order:

Whoa! That ant is three times the size of the workers nearby! It’s a queen!

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My Father-in-law, Birk Petersen, has been taking modeling photographs for years.

Not that kind of modeling. This kind of modeling. (Though he has been known to call his models “cute little darlings”.)

When I told him about my bug photography, he rushed out and took a picture of some ants. Not this picture. The picture was badly blurred, and we ended up having several discussions about optics and CCD sensors and the latest camera technology. He finally broke down and bought a new camera, a Canon PowerShot A560. One of the first things he did with it was snap this photo. As you can see, it gives terrific results.

This is a classic Myrmica ant swarm, the kind that can be found on any sidewalk in June in Utah, just walk along looking at the edge where the lawns meet the cement. You can’t miss them. I still don’t know what the ants are doing. Moving? Attacking? Mating? Wild frat¹ parties?

¹ Again, technically, sorority parties. We’ve been over this.

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Scott “The Ecodestroyer” Roche sends in a signed confession along with photographic proof of his crime: willfully destroying the habitat of these ants. From this photo we can clearly see Scott’s terrible actions displacing dozens, if not hundreds, of ant children, pupae and eggs.

Scott was unrepentant. In sworn testimony, he said “if you want to make a bunch of really tiny ant omelettes, you have to break a bunch of really tiny ant eggs.”

Okay, Scott didn’t say exactly that. I may be taking a bit of artistic license here. By which I mean “I am telling an outright lie.” But let’s not quibble about definitions. Scott’s the criminal here.

Here are Scott’s actual words:

We were working in the backyard and started to pick up our kids play parachute that had been crumpled up beside our trampoline when we noticed a swarm of these black ants the size of poppy seeds. Everyone shouted “Get the camera!” and so we did. They were so small that getting a good shot of them turned out to be pretty hard. This is the only one that turned out non-blurry and it’s got a great shot of the eggs. They were clearing out in a hurry, sensing I suppose that their nest was going bye-bye.

Hope you can use it!

Oh yes, Mr. The Destroyer. We can use it. In fact, anything you say can and will be used against you in a court.

A court of awesome, perhaps. Great photo, Scott!

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Jeremiah Fargo strikes again, this time with a picture of a black ant.

I’m not sure on the species of this ant, but the general appearance lead me to suspect Camponotus pennsylvanicus, especially the abdominal hair pattern as shown here: http://bugguide.net/node/view/83531

Any takers on a positive id? This could also be a Formica ant, but I’m not sure.

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Alan Krause makes the humble Argentine Ant look artful in this photo. Don’t even try to tell me you don’t want the wallpaper.

There are two species in this genus across the United States; they are thought to have arrived here in a coffee bean shipment to New Orleans in 1891. They reproduce at staggering rates because more than one queen will often share a colony, and they make for a highly effective pest because they’ll eat anything. Oh, and when the weather turns bad, they invade human homes for shelter. They’re teeny–about 2.5mm long.

This might not actually be an Argentine Ant as bugguide indicates that there are a couple of ant species that can only be told apart by checking dental records. Hey, stop laughing. I’m not making that up. “Forelius species have a different dental array on mandibles”. There, see?  Chances are good, however, that if Alan is taking this picture he’s familiar with the peskiness of this ant, and if it’s not Argentine proper, then it’s a close cousin.

Thanks again, Alan!

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Okay, technically, the flight portion hasn’t actually started. Tiogshi Laj went back to the ant colony he photographed last week and took another look. This time he found about a dozen of these larger, winged ants hanging around. Those are either new queens or male drones. I’m guessing queens because they are almost twice the size of the workers, and males tend to be fairly close to normal size. Either way, this is a mating flight in its first stages!

The thing that’s really crazy, however, is that I’m pretty sure those are Formica ants of some kind, but Formica ants don’t start mating flights until next June! I could believe it if this were in a lower latitude perhaps, but Tiogshi is in Canada! It is entirely possible that the ant mating flight schedule¹ I consulted was inaccurate or incomplete. It is even more possible that I have simply misidentified these ants. But still, it’s interesting to note.

Thanks, Tiogshi!

¹ Yes, such things exist. This implies that there also exist people who spend their time creating them.

P.S. This mating flight chart from Germany shows a couple of Formica species that fly in mid-April. Ants species aren’t quite as cosmopolitan as humans, but if they can fly in April in that climate, perhaps they can fly now here.

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This picture clearly demonstrates how much better than me Earl Goodson is at getting clear shots of tiny ants.

With apologies to Earl, I don’t have time for a long post today. And it really sucks because there’s so much to talk about.

Actually, you know what? Go google Adele M. Fielde. She’s crazy awesome. She did hundreds of experiments on ants, writing some of the definitive literature on them. She invented portable nest boxes that greatly aided scientists desiring to study ants. She has a very readable style. Did you know that ants smell with their antennae? Okay, but did you also know that each segment of their antennae smells something different? One segment for “is this my nest?”, another segment for “are you from my nest?”, yet another for “is this food?” Adele M. Fielde is the person who figured this all out.

Oh, and she did it over a hundred years ago. Check out this paper on scent recognition: http://www.biolbull.org/cgi/reprint/5/6/320.pdf

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Tiogshi Laj was outside the other day and spotted a swarm of slaver ants, and decided to stop to take some pictures. The “distant” blurry background is mottled red and black because it’s solid ants. I’m not sure on the exact species of ant, but this looks like one of the Formica species to me. These ants go on raids to capture larvae and pupae from other ants nests; it might be one such raid that Tiogshi has caught on film here.

There may well be other reasons for them to be out in force like this, but I only know of two: The first would be mating flights of the new queens. I strongly doubt that this is the case, however, since it is early Spring in British Columbia where this photo was taken, and queens are the “crop” of an ant colony: after a long Summer’s growing season, they come forth with the Fall Harvest. The second reason would be colony alarm. If something were digging up the anthill the defenders would be out in force. I suspect that this is also not the case, however, as Tiogshi didn’t notice anything in particular attacking the nest. It could be something small, like another ant colony, but in all the photos Tiogshi sent me there only appear one species and they’re all getting along with each other.

There’s a lot of interesting things about Formica ants. Their name derives from the formic acid that they use as a defense. This ant doesn’t sting much but instead uses a puff of acid to deter enemies. There’s something else I love about these ants. See if you can spot it in this second photo from Tiogshi:

Do you see her?

Formica ants have some of the best eyesight among ants, and they use it to defensive effect… along with gigantic pinching jaws.

See the wide open jaws? This ant really is looking at the camera… and daring it to come any closer!

Thank you Tiogshi! Awesome photos!

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Scott Roche sends in today’s picture of ants milking aphids on a pine tree. I am reminded of a highly refined bit of operatic culture from my childhood:

There’s a place in France
Where the nekkid ladies dance
Because their pants
Are fuuuuull of aaaaants!

In case you grew up culturally impoverished with regard to this particular bit of bardic lore, you might be wondering how nekkid ladies could be wearing pants. Well, they can’t, silly! They’re nekkid because they took them off. Because they were fuuuuull of aaaaants!

Every child who grew up on a farm knows how to deal with fire ants: stop, drop trou, and roll.

In a related childhood safety tip, this technique also works for liar, liars.

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Last week Jeremiah wrote me to say that he was bored, so I naturally assigned him a task: go find a bug and photograph it for InsectPOD. He quailed a bit at first, saying that he lives in Delaware and that there aren’t any bugs out there right now. Well, we’ve already seen how bugs thrive even in the middle of Winter, and Jeremiah decided to take this on as a challenge.

Interestingly enough, what he found is technically a “winter inactive” species: an ant. I can’t even begin to classify this critter. Could be a slaver, could be a harvester. About the only thing I’m sure of is that he photographed it on toilet paper. Or a paper towel. Or floral linoleum. Okay, so I can’t tell what that is either.

I like different pictures for different reasons. One of the things I like about this photo is that Jeremiah had to push his camera to its limits to get this photo. I have plenty of photos like this from my early insect photography days, where I had to get lucky with a bug and then get creative with my equipment to get the shot.

Thanks again, Jeremiah!