Common Swift Pelopidas

Fogg Dam Conservation Reserve, Northern Territory, Australia

This is either Lyell's swift Pelopidas lyelli or a dingy swift P. agna, both referred to as the common swift. Or it's a rice swift Borbo cinnara, but it seems a bit unlikely.

As you can tell, I know nothing about Australian butterflies, other than what I've been able to glean so far from Michael Braby's Butterflies of Australia. This was one of the very few butterflies willing to pose patiently whilst I got close enough to photograph it, but it turns out that I wasn't able to fit in any of the characteristics that might have separated the three species.

One of the things that I didn't notice when taking the photograph was the small mite that appears to be attached to the butterfly's tongue.

Mite on Pelopidas tongue

Comedy spider

Oh, look: dumb photographer.

Wait, who's that?

Wow!

Taken at Jindalba, Cape Tribulation, Queensland, Australia.

Lasius niger on peony flower buds

This is a new behaviour for me, so perhaps others can fill me in.

We have two different peonies in our garden planted right next to each other; either different species or varieties. The flower buds on one of them is currently covered in black garden ants Lasius niger, which are clearly attending them for some reason. The other peony has no ants - not one - on the flower buds.

I spent some time yesterday watching and photographing the behaviour and still can't explain it. There are no aphids, so it can't be honeydew, and I can't see any obvious extra-floral nectaries. The ants' attentions seem to be focused on the sides of what are probably  sepals but may be developing petals (see photo).

Lasius niger on garden peony © M. J. Lush, 2013

Most of the time when I see ants on plants they are attending homoptera, so the relationship is unlikely to be very beneficial to the plants. This may be one case that is really advantageous to the plant, but I don't see what the ants are getting out of it or why they are only on one of the two plants.

Is this familiar to anyone?

Myrmica slovaca

Myrmica slovaca worker

This is further evidence that my large backlog of ant specimens really needs dealing with!

This specimen is clearly Myrmica slovaca, due to the narrow frons, scape and petiole shape. It was previously erroneously regarded as M. salina in Europe, but this was recently resolved by Radchenko and Elmes (2010), who found that it is quite different from true M. salina. Even so, the name may still be subject to some change, as Seifert (2011) suggests that M. curvithorax is the senior synonym. Currently, according to AntWeb, M. slovaca is still considered to be the correct name.

As far as I've been able to find out, M. slovaca was previously recorded only once in France (as M. salina) at Pont-à-Mousson in 2005, which is situated at approximately 6.03° E and was considered to be the western limit of the species range. This would make my collection, at 5°20.055'E, the new western extent of the species' range. Of course, there may now be other records of this species from France and I would be very pleased to receive further information.

You have to wonder though... I collected this in a rather unpromising looking motorway service station. Seifert (2007) notes the species' high tolerance for changes in humidity, temperature and soil salinity. Is it possible that it is being transported by people and its wide tolerance allows it to colonise a variety of sites? It certainly seems incredible that such a distinctive species had never been recorded in France before 2005.

Bothriomyrmex corsicus

Bothriomyrmex corsicus worker

It's been a long time since I've posted anything (the effect of getting married and renovating a house). I thought that this was worth breaking a three year habit.

By all accounts, Bothriomyrmex species seem to be pretty uncommon, so I'm pleased that the first one I found is the second, not the first, most common in Europe. Bothriomyrmex taxonomy was in a very confusing state, so these specimens previously keyed out as B. menozzii, but thanks to Seifert (2012) the picture is clearer. I can now say with certainty that they are B. corsicus (Seifert could not find B. laticeps type material, but my specimens didn't fit Emery's (1925) description of laticeps anyway, based upon the length of the antennal segments).

The European species of Bothriomyrmex are temporary social parasites of Tapinoma species. It is likely that invading queens of all Bothriomyrmex species kill the host queen, decapitating them with specialised mandibles, after which they become very physogastric (i.e. they swell with eggs).

I didn't collect any B. corsicus queens, but did collect a male. Unfortunately, the male was a bit mangled when it came out of the tube and did not mount very well, so wouldn't make a good photomontage.

These ants were found under a stone in south-facing subalpine grassland near Venanson, in the Alpes-Maritimes, France, not very far from other locations listed by Seifert (2012). What was perhaps most interesting was that the stone also covered a very large colony of Solenopsis fugax. This suggests that the S. fugax may have been stealing brood from the B. corsicus. S. fugax is known to raid Formica (Serviformica) and Lasius nests, and I have found them alongside Camponotus ligniperda, but I wonder whether there are any records of them stealing brood from Bothriomyrmex or any other Dolichoderine ants.

Agapanthia villosoviridescens

Last week I was on a canal boat holiday. The highlight of the whole trip (in my mind) was this beetle, Agapanthia villosoviridescens, which was photographed on Claire's finger. It wasn't so much that it is pretty (though it evidently is), it was that when handled it made a very audible squeak.

Closer observation showed that when it squeaked it also moved its pronotum relative to its elytra, suggesting that it produces the sound by flexing the hinge between pronotum and elytra.

I felt sure that this behaviour would have been observed and reported before, so was surprised when I got home yesterday and looked it up to find no reports. It could simply be that I haven't looked in the right places, but I've tried every possible web search that I can think of and have found nothing. In addition, Andrew Duff's articles on longhorn beetles in British Wildlife fail to make any mention. It seems worthy of a blog simply to report the behaviour.

According to the NBN Gateway, A. villosoviridescens has an odd distribution in the UK, deing restricted to the mid- and eastern-England, but absent from the extreme south or south east. Apparently it used to be considered very rare. It's larvae feed in the stem tissues of thistles and umbellifers.

Rickia wasmannii everywhere

Thanks to John Pontin for pointing out the Rickia infested ant in one of this years Wildlife Photographer of the Year competition. I had the portfolio at home, but hadn't noticed the fungus on the ant. It's a bit hard to tell from the online image, but is really quite clear when it's a bit bigger.

I'm thinking that the ant is probably Myrmica rubra. As far as I know, R. wasmannii has not been recorded on this species before. Perhaps the photographer, András Mészáros, would be able to help establish whether I'm right?

I'm starting to think that R. wasmannii is actually quite common in Europe, but just under-recorded. Has anyone else made Rickia sightings?

Blog Action Day 2009

Those nice folks at Blog Action Day don't seem to know how to make things simple. Kittens. If they decided to make kittens the subject I'd be able to write a nice concise blog on why kittens are important. Instead I'm left to ponder how to cover undoubtedly the biggest issue of our time: climate change.

The trouble is that with a subject this big, it's hard to know what to write. After weeks of wondering what to write I'm afraid that I'm going to do a stream-of-conciousness on the subject. This will start with me getting back on my soap box, briefly, and mentioning biodiversity loss (I've already covered the subject before): I really care about all biodiversity, from the smallest to largest, cuddly to ugly, friendly to just plain scary, I think it's all amazing. I find it staggeringly difficult to understand how people can not feel a similar sense of awe and wonder. The biggest threat to this thing that I love is climate change.

However, it's not just wildlife that will suffer, as humans will too. Part of this will be as a direct impact of climate change, part will be as a result of the loss of biodiversity. It will and has arguably already started to happen all over the world. It will be have respect for money or power. Saving our failing economy will not help us in the long run. Quite frankly, if we don't do something, we're screwed.

There may be some sceptics reading this. I'm never quite sure what you say to sceptics. Do you ask whether they think after 30 years of collecting data and improved modelling, hundreds of experts worldwide are wrong? Do you ask them whether they think it is some kind of global conspiracy? Do you tell them that denial won't stop these things from happening? Or do you simply tell them to wake up to the fact that a single species can have a significant, long-term impact upon an entire planet?

The rest of us have to continue to strive to make a small difference. I'm guilty of failing to do this as much as anyone. I'm currently sitting in an artificially lit office, writing on a computer that is draining electricity. None of us are going to eliminate our energy requirements altogether, but it would be nice to think that we could all get into some positive habits that, when multiplied up, might just make ensure a better future.

Rickia wasmannii in the UK

Did anyone else notice the photograph on Plate 8 of the 'Ants of Surrey', captioned 'A rare variety of M. sabuleti with unusually shaped hairs? I'd had the book for ages and not paid any attention to it until a few weeks back. The unusually shaped hairs looked remarkably familiar to me.

I emailed John Pontin, to see if he had any specimens of these ants. After a bit of a mix-up over my address (which has changed since the last BWARS newsletter, by the way) I finally retrieved the two specimens he sent to me. They are covered with Rickia wasmannii, as I suspected, more so than the specimens I collected in Bavaria. This fulfils my ambition of finding it first in the UK, even if I didn't collect it. It also means probably two more papers to write (one for the mycologists, one for the myrmecologists).

Lasius neglectus found in the UK

According to a BBC News report released yesterday the invasive species Lasius neglectus has been found in Gloucestershire in the UK.

For those who are unaware of L. neglectus, it is a relatively newly discovered invasive ant species. It has been marching across Europe and, because it does not seem to be too bothered by cold conditions, a number of myrmecologists have been predicting that it will become or was already established in the UK, making it the first non-native ant that could survive away from heated buildings. The question was how long it would take for its presence to be realised, as it looks very similar to the common black garden ant Lasius niger.

More information on the identification, biology and status of L. neglectus.

Swiss ant list

I visited Switzerland in June 2009 and have started to work through the specimens collected. This list will grow over the next few months and I'll try to get some photographs of the more interesting species up.

Dolichoderinae
     Tapinoma
          erraticum
Formicinae
     Camponotus
          herculeanus
          ligniperda
          piceus
     Formica
          fusca
          lemani
          lugubris
          paralugubris
          pressilabris
          sanguinea
     Lasius
          brunneus
          emaginatus
          flavus
          fuliginosus
          platythorax
Myrmicinae
     Aphaenogaster
          subterranea
     Manica
          rubida
     Myrmecina
          graminicola
     Myrmica
          lobulicornis
          myrmicoxena
          rubra
          ruginodis
          schencki
          sulcinodis
     Solenopsis
          fugax
     Temnothorax
          nylanderi
          parvulus
          tuberum
     Tetramorium
          sp. A ¹

---

¹ See: Schlick-Steiner & al. (2006). Molecular Phylogenetics and Evolution 40: 259-273.

Competition time

My first ever competition, and it's a tricky one!

Can anyone correctly identify the ant in the photograph? I'll start the competition with no clues and we'll see how it goes. (I'll probably find out if anyone's still reading this blog after my months of absence.)

I'll send a hard copy of my next paper (which will probably be about this ant) to the first person to correctly identify it to species level. Plus you'll get the respect of your peers.

Those with whom I've already spoken about this are excluded from the competition - they'll just have to ask me nicely for the paper.

No apologies

I will not make excuses for not blogging recently.
I will not make excuses for not blogging recently.
I will not mkae excuses for not blogging recently.
I will not make excuses for not bloging recently.
I will not make excuses for not blogging recently.
I will not make excuses for not blogging recently...

Ant work resumed again last night. Blogs may follow.

Selenochlamys ysbryda

Way too many things stopping me from posting at the moment, from my computer dying completely (thankfully it turned out that I only needed to reset the bios to repair it) to major, if welcome, distractions. I'm sure that things will settle down eventually, but for now I'm anticipating ants taking a back seat. I know: it truly is a scary thing to consider.

Back in July I reported on a species new to science from the UK, the ghost slug Selenochlamys ysbryda.

One of my new colleagues saw something last year that he claimed to be a ghost slug right outside of our office building in Talgarth, but wasn't able to get Cardiff Museum to verify it without a photograph. Last week, having given up hope of finding another one, he found it again in the same spot. Again, no one could find a camera, so I picked it up, took it home and now have a pet slug.

So here it is! The photograph below was confirmed by Ben Rowson at Cardiff Museum as S. ysbryda, who also stated that Talgarth is the furthest north that this species has been found (though Brecon comes a close second). The other verified records are from Caerphilly, Cardiff, Gorseinon and Newport, so it's evidently not been widely found yet. I shall be looking out for it in my garden in Bronllys, about two miles further north.


I shall be taking this specimen, and any others that I find, to Cardiff Museum, to assist with their research on the species. Until then it'll be feeding on worms from my garden.

New year, new home, new job, new species

Apologies for the lack of recent posts. I moved at the end of November to start a new job in Talgarth, Wales. Following my move it took my ISP a whole month to set up my connection here, with a lot of extended phone calls and a rather long and comprehensive written complaint from me to get them to sort it out as quick as they did. Needless to say I am not best pleased with the company.

One rather important event that took place over the last month was that my recent paper was published, describing a new species, Monomorium subcomae. It may not be much, but it is my first new species. (I don't have the time or resources to conduct large scale taxonomic reviews. At the time I did the M. subcomae work I was working off of a table in my kitchen - at least now I have a dedicated office/lab.)

The type material for M. subcomae was collected in Kuwait by David M. King, though Mostafa Sharaf has already informed me that he has the species from Egypt. The specimens gradually found their way to me through Brian Taylor, along with numerous other tubes from around the Mediterranean.

M. subcomae is one of many species in the Middle East and North Africa that are related to Monomorium areniphilum, all of which have a propodeum that it on a distinctly lower plane than the promesonotum, as well as large eyes and distinctive striate sculpture on the head. Not many of the areniphilum-complex are bicoloured, so this makes M. subcomae relatively easy to identify. The key in Collingwood & Agosti (1996) can be easily adapted to include M. subcomae as follows:

17	Eyes large, greater than 0.25 times HW		17a
	Eyes small, 0.25 times HW or less		18
17a	Ventral surface of head with numerous long setae		subcomae
	Ventral surface of head glabrous		venustum

As yet nothing is known about the ecology of M. subcomae. Perhaps over time people like Mostafa will be able to fill in some of the details.


Citation and abstract: Lush, M. J. 2008. A new species of Monomorium (Hymenoptera: Formicidae) from Kuwait. Zoology in the Middle East 45: 67-72.

Another picture from Cromhall

I was concentrating on the sawfly at the time, but I think it is the fly that draws the eye in this photograph. I don't think I realised how attractive it was at the time - it's just a fly after all.

I think the sawfly is a species of Athalia (see comment). At one point it would have been easy to identify it as A. rosae, but it appears that there may have been some revisions to the genus. My best guess is that this common Athalia is now known as A. circularis, but it's not clear as my books don't adequately cover sawflies and most of the internet sources evidently haven't caught up. Perhaps someone can tell me?

Things that aren't wasps

Though it wasn't my intention to begin with, this neatly follows on from Bug Girl's posts Things that aren’t bees (#1) and (#2).

One of my colleagues spotted both male and female Phasia hemiptera along the road at work, so the next day I brought in my camera to try to get some photographs of what is probably one of the UK's prettiest flies. I've since discovered that very few photographs of P. hemiptera do justice to the iridescent blue on the wings, so I don't feel quite so bad about failing to get any photographs over two consecutive days.

Instead I spent my time photographing the abundance of other insects, mainly on hogweed Heracleum sphondylium. Chief among these were hoverflies (Syrphidae), including the species below. Now that colder weather is setting in I'm getting around to dealing with the images.

I'm not an expert and I did not get any of the hoverflies photographed under a microscope, so don't rely on these identifications!

The most abundant hoverfly was Syrphus. I'm certain that I saw female Syrphus ribesii, so I'm assuming that this male (right) is also S. ribesii.

Also present on one day was a male Syrphus with a twisted abdomen (left). Sadly it did not pose especially well, but the shot does show the distorted abdominal tergites. I thought at the time that it might be a stylops, but they do not appear to parasitize flies at all.

Rather similar, but not as common, was Dasysyrphus albostriatus. The individual to the right is a female and shows the distinctive lines on the thorax that provide its name.


Probably the prettiest species present with regular stripes on the abdomen was Eupeodes luniger. This female (left) looked like a flying jewel in the sunshine, with a bluish sheen to the black areas on the abdomen.

Scaeva pyrastri (male, right) has more white or cream coloured stripes on the abdomen.

Another very common hoverfly in the UK, so common in fact that it has a English name, is the marmalade hoverfly Episyrphus balteatus (male left). This is possibly one of the most distinctive hoverflies in the UK, due to the overall shape and the double stripes on each abdominal tergite.

Also very distinctive is Chrysotoxum bicinctum, as it seems to be the only British species with two stripes on the abdomen as shown on the female on the right. I think that C. bicinctum is one of the few species that does a convincing job of looking like a wasp. This is on yarrow Achillea millefolium, rather than hogweed.

Finally, there was Xylota sylvarum. If I had seen this before then I obviously haven't been paying enough attention, as it is large, glossily hairy and attractive, if a little lumbering (there is also the smaller but similar X. xanthocnema). I fell in love with this female so there are two photographs (below, left and right)!

Entomophthora muscae

The largest part of the autumn fungus fruiting season may have passed in the UK, or at least where I live, but there are still a few things around, if you're prepared to look closely for them.

Yes, it's a fly (I don't know which species), but it is a fly with a fungal parasite, Entomophthora muscae. The fungus grows inside the fly, eventually reaching the fly's brain and influencing its behaviour. The fungus needs to get as high as possible to ensure reproductive success, so it forces the fly to climb to the top of a flower, twig or, as in this case, blade of grass and then makes it hold tight. In some cases I've even seen fungal hyphae around the flies proboscis and legs where the fungus has apparently anchored its host (though I suppose this could be a secondary infection in older specimens). The fungus then kills the fly and bursts through its abdomen to shed its spores. These spores are picked up by the wind to infect the next generation of flies.

E. muscae isn't rare by any means, but it does seem to be overlooked. It also seems to be most abundant as it starts to get wetter in autumn, so I find it most years at about this time. Nevertheless, I have very rarely found as perfect a specimen as this.

I know there won't be many others who share this opinion, but I do think that E. muscae is rather awesome.

Blog Action Day: Poverty

This year Blog Action Day is about poverty. 'Keep your post related to your regular blog topic' they say.

However, linking ants to poverty seems impossible. The best I could come up with was a video criticism of a Neocon version of the parable of the ant and the grasshopper which, whilst true, is not exactly interesting or relevant. So I'm moving up to the overarching theme of biodiversity, as there are many links between biodiversity and poverty.

Money is so often made at the expense of the natural world, most often not by locals, who are exploited just as badly as the environment in which they live. However, it doesn't always have to be like this. Anyone who's been watching Bruce Parry's Amazon (which should be everyone, as it's brilliant) will know about the Mamirauá Sustainable Development Reserve, within which local communities are encouraged to live sustainably. The local communities feel that being part of the programme operating within the reserve benefits them and increases their quality of life.

Last year, the United Nations Environment Programme World Conservation Monitoring Centre (UNEP-WCMC) published a report entitled Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction; The importance of biodiversity for ecosystem services. I'd recommend reading the summary of this report at least. It lists some of the ecosystem services on which the poor are particularly dependent, including:

• 'Varied diet (including flavourings and micronutrients), famine foods and food security - provided directly by components of biodiversity that are consumed, and through a wide range of biodiversity that is crucial for food production, including that involved in the services of pollination, pest and disease control, and soil fertility.
• Water quality and availability (including regulation of flooding events), and erosion control - affected variously by vegetative cover at local and landscape scales.
• Medicines and health, both through the supply of natural medicines, and through the regulation of infections and emerging diseases.
• Cultural values, closely tied in many societies to components of biodiversity, typically at the species or landscape level.'

Source: UNEP-WCMC - Biodiversity and Poverty Reduction

One of the main points that the report makes is that the rich can 'buy-in' services when ecosystems stop providing them. The poor cannot do this, so are much more dependent upon greater diversity through a heterogeneous local environment.

Combating both poverty and the loss of biodiversity are two of the greatest challenges to face us in the 21st Century, so it is good that the two are not mutually exclusive. What will probably have to change are current economic policies, as these generally operate at the expense of the poor and biodiversity - though, given the current global financial crisis, maybe now is the time for significant change anyway. Ultimately, we as citizens of rich nations have to make a decision about which is important: other members of our species and the world in which we live, or money. Only one of these will not matter when we are gone.

Absolute genius

This is The BossHoss. Really gimmicky, but genius nonetheless.



If that's not enough, check out their versions of 'Hey Ya!', 'Toxic' and a number of other covers. Before there are any accusations of selling out (which might otherwise be justified) I should point out that they're German.