Nature
awild | March 28, 2010I've moved some of my better termite photos to a new gallery at alexanderwild.com.
Go visit.
grrlscientist | March 28, 2010tags: Nordwestzentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Gelbe Wolken, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Gelbe Wolken.
Nordwestzentrum Open Air Market, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 3 March 2010 [larger view]
When I saw these brilliant lemon yellow flowers, I was immediately captivated. I took half a dozen photographs, trying to capture the fluffiness and the brilliant yellow color of the flowers and contrast that against the dark background as well as the sharp edges of the green leaves. I don't think I succeeded at this, but this is still a nice image to look…
awild | March 27, 2010No, not really. I'm just kidding. Wouldn't it be great to have an ant field guide, though?
Off and on for the past couple years I've been playing with concepts. A potential format is this (click to download pdf):
The salient features, in my opinion:
Targeted at the general naturalist, so less technical than the excellent Fisher & Cover guide
Organized around genera, as species IDs remain problematic without microscopes
With synopses of the most commonly encountered species
Containing brief chapters on ant ecology, collection, culture, etc
But that's what I'd like in an ant book.…
grrlscientist | March 26, 2010tags: Nordwestzentrum, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Beobachten Sie, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Beobachten Sie.
Nordwestzentrum Open Air Market, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 3 March 2010 [larger view]
This was one of hundreds of cut flowers that I photographed at the Nordwestzentrum Open Air Market one particularly sunny morning. I knew I had a winner when I was looking at the flowers through the view finder, but the sunlight was strong and bleached some of the colors (although not in this image!). Despite my crappy German, it was rather obvious that…
awild | March 26, 2010
Tenebrio molitor, pupa
Tenebrio molitor is a darkling beetle known more for its immature stages than for its adults. It is the ubiquitous mealworm. You can buy these granivorous beetles at any pet store as food for fish, birds, and reptiles.
The above shot of a developing pupa requires two sources of light. A flash head positioned behind the insect backlights the subject to produce the translucent glow. A second, positioned above and in front, is powered down and provides the highlights and details of the head and appendages.
Tenebrio molitor larva and pupa
Stronger backlighting gives…
grrlscientist | March 25, 2010tags: Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Quaken Crocus, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Quaken Crocus.
Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 March 2010 [larger view]
This morning, at the Max-Planck Institute, I photographed some cheerful flowers; brilliant red petals, each with a lemon yellow base .. tulips, I believe, but the lighting was all wrong, so I could not capture what I wished to share with you. I shall return soon to try again. But this "miss" does provide me with the opportunity to…
awild | March 25, 2010
Blatta orientalis
Oriental Cockroach
The key to this image is the soft lighting. A strobe fired into a white box produces an even white light, allowing us to see the subtler tones and textures on the surface of this common pest insect. You could almost sell this roach on ebay.
Photo details: Canon 100mm f2.8 macro lens on a Canon EOS 50D
ISO 200, f10, 1/160 sec
grrlscientist | March 25, 2010tags: nature, numbers, geometry, mathematics, Fibonacci sequence, Golden Ratio, Angle Ratio, Delaunay Triangulation, Voronoi Tessellations, filmmaking, animation, Cristobal Vila, Nature by Numbers, streaming video
In this beautiful video, "Nature by Numbers," filmmaker Cristobal Vila presents a series of animations illustrating various mathematic principles, beginning with a breathtaking animation of the Fibonacci Sequence before moving on to the Golden Ratio, the Angle Ratio, the Delaunay Triangulation and Voronoi Tessellations. The words are scary-sounding, but the math is beautiful and the…
grrlscientist | March 24, 2010tags: Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, Moosblüten, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Moosblüten.
Max-Planck Institut für Biophysik, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 March 2010 [larger view]
I was walking around at the Max-Planck Institute today, enjoying the spring weather and saw these tiny moss flowers growing in the lawn. The grass has not yet awoken, but the moss was happily growing on the moist earth. I wish you were here with me today, to see these tiny flowers with me.
awild | March 24, 2010What was that dashing bug in pastel colors? As so many of you picked, it's a palmetto planthopper.
Order: Hemiptera
Family: Flatidae
Genus: Ormenaria
Species: rufifascia
Points are awarded as follows:
James Trager: 8 points
Chris Grinter: 5 points
And, one point each for TGIQ, Pete Yeeles, and Ted MacRae for providing additional information including suborder and species year & author.
grrlscientist | March 23, 2010tags: nature, stars, astronony, new discovery, amateur astronomer, citizen scientist, supernova, supernova 2008ha , stellar explosion, Caroline Moore, streaming video
There is no age restriction on the chance to make a significant contribution to our understanding of the universe. Caroline Moore, a 14-year-old from Warwick, NY, has made such a mark on astronomy with the discovery of Supernova 2008ha. Not only is she the youngest person to discover a supernova, but this particular supernova has been identified as a different type of stellar explosion.
To borrow one of her favorite words,…
awild | March 22, 2010Tonight's mystery is a straight-up Name That Bug:
From central Florida, the mystery insect
One point for picking the order, two points for family, five points for genus, and five points for species. [added in edit- you've got to be first in any one category].
And guess what? We've finally decided what to do with all these hard-earned Myrmecos Points!
At the end of every month, I'll tally points from the preceding weeks and the winner will get to choose either:
Any 8x10 print from the galleries of www.alexanderwild.com
-or, since so many of you are bloggers-
A freebie blog entry where the…
awild | March 22, 2010The Nature Blog Network is the web's largest congregation of natural history enthusiasts and one of the finest places to find new bloggy reading. This week NBN interviews me as part of their Featured Blog series:
Whatâs the best thing about blogging?
Blogging is instantaneous. I can respond to new scientific papers as I read them, for example. This might not sound like much, but you have to understand the traditional scientific publishing model. In the old system if I wanted to react to a paper, Iâd submit a letter or a review to the journal, itâd go through peer-review, and 8 months…
grrlscientist | March 20, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, PalmenGarten Blüten, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Rosa Blüte.
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
Today was not very nice, weather-wise, so the spouse and I spent the day hanging out in our favorite bistro, eating, drinking, and working on a few things that we needed to get done. To the causal observer, it probably looked like a wasted day, but for us, it was perfect: it was exactly what we needed.
laelaps | March 19, 2010
At almost every aquarium I have ever visited with a seahorse exhibit, the plaque in front of the tank says the same thing: in seahorses and their relatives, males, not females, carry the babies. It is always interesting to watch the reactions of visitors to this curious fact. Adult men, for instance, sometimes seem unsettled by the thought of male pregnancy, but the reproductive reversal among the fish is often seen as kinda cute ("How sweet. A fishy dad taking care of his kids!"). As shown by a study by Kimberly Paczolt and Adam Jones published this week in Nature, however, there can be…
grrlscientist | March 19, 2010tags: PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany, PalmenGarten Blüten, flowers, nature, environment, image of the day
Palmengarten Blüten.
PalmenGarten, Frankfurt am Main, Germany.
Image: GrrlScientist, 24 February 2010 [larger view]
Today was an absolutely spectacular day! If tomorrow is as amazing, I will be wandering around the hillsides of Germany, looking for slow-moving beings (such as flowers) to photograph so I can share them with you on my humble blog.
awild | March 19, 2010This week was warm enough to go insect hunting in the yard, so the Friday beetle is back with new material. I snapped a few shots of this little staphylinid under a brick, figuring I'd identify it later.
That turned out to be a more complicated process than I'd anticipated.
It's a member of the the subfamily Aleocharinae, the obscure rove beetles. To arrive at an identification any more specific than that is basically impossible. The late James Ashe wrote:
The seemingly endless diversity, the small size of most adults, and the virtual lack of illustrated keys and descriptions of…
ddobbs | March 19, 2010
Cordyceps in glass, by glass artist Wesley Fleming -- a strange depiction of a rather horrid business. For more, do go to the source, the lovely Myrmecos Blog, which is all about bugs.
Now, the best of the week's gleanings. I'm going to categorize them from here out, and at least try to keep them from being from completely all over everywhere about everything.
Mind, brain, and body (including those gene things)
While reading Wolpert's review of Greenberg's book about depression (he didn't much like it), I found that the Guardian has a particularly rich trove of writings and resources on…
awild | March 16, 2010Podomyrma sp.
Cape York Peninsula, Queensland, Australia
Photo details: Canon MP-E 65mm 1-5x macro lens on a Canon EOS D60
ISO 100, f13, 1/200 sec, flash diffused through tracing paper
awild | March 16, 2010The magical mystery lump from last night? As many astute readers noted, they are insects in the enigmatic order Strepsiptera. They live as parasites in the bodies of other insects. Considering the host species (Isodontia mexicana, a sphecid wasp), the streps are probably in the genus Paraxenos. Here are a couple more shots:
Assuming my math is correct, here's your point breakdown:
Ted McRae: 20
macromite: 20
Joshua King: 20
Gordon Snelling: 10
Scot Waring: 10
Invictacidal: 10
Chris: 10
tuckerlancaster: 5
I gave ten points for identifying the mystery as a Strepsiptera, five for picking…