Most days I have inane songs stuck in my head. However, for most of today it has been 'F.U.N.E.X?' that has been haunting my thoughts.
Tuesday, 29 July 2008
Monday, 21 July 2008
Witness to a birth... sort of
Seven weeks ago (to the day) I found a Lasius queen in a soil claustral cell beneath some moss in a woodland.
I don't make a habit of collecting Lasius queens to rear colonies from - they are two-a-penny in the UK (only slightly more expensive than a-dime-a-dozen at todays exchange rate) and the workers are marvellous escapologists, making them difficult to keep.
However, this queen looked like a Lasius flavus queen, so I thought she might be something more interesting since woodland is not the normal habitat for L. flavus. I collected the queen and the soil of the cell surrounding her and placed everything in a tube.
She had remained in that tube until yesterday, when I decided it was time to investigate why I hadn't seen any activity for about three weeks. Of course, this meant that when I discovered the queen and brood and two callow workers it was too late to get them back in the tube, so I had to find them some alternative accommodation in a plaster nest.
I left them to settle into the plaster nest, checking on them every couple of hours. Then in the early evening I counted not two but three workers, so I decided that I would take them into work today, so that I could keep an eye on them.
I'm glad I did. Not a lot happened until 16:00 when, as I was moving to get a drink, I spotted activity. The queen was licking what was obviously an emerging adult ant. The other workers were also showing an above normal level of excitement (i.e. they were moving, rather than just standing over the brood). The queen continued to lick this fourth worker for about 30 minutes, until she left it, twitching, presumably to harden its cuticle.
This was very exciting for me, as in ten years of studying ants it was something I had never before witnessed. To be fair, I've only been keeping ants for about a year and it's the sort of thing that you need to be in the right place at the right time to see.
Once I got them home, at around about 18:00, there was a fifth ant! They are yellow, so I'm becoming more convinced that they are just the common L. flavus, but they're entertaining me.
I don't make a habit of collecting Lasius queens to rear colonies from - they are two-a-penny in the UK (only slightly more expensive than a-dime-a-dozen at todays exchange rate) and the workers are marvellous escapologists, making them difficult to keep.
However, this queen looked like a Lasius flavus queen, so I thought she might be something more interesting since woodland is not the normal habitat for L. flavus. I collected the queen and the soil of the cell surrounding her and placed everything in a tube.
She had remained in that tube until yesterday, when I decided it was time to investigate why I hadn't seen any activity for about three weeks. Of course, this meant that when I discovered the queen and brood and two callow workers it was too late to get them back in the tube, so I had to find them some alternative accommodation in a plaster nest.
I left them to settle into the plaster nest, checking on them every couple of hours. Then in the early evening I counted not two but three workers, so I decided that I would take them into work today, so that I could keep an eye on them.
I'm glad I did. Not a lot happened until 16:00 when, as I was moving to get a drink, I spotted activity. The queen was licking what was obviously an emerging adult ant. The other workers were also showing an above normal level of excitement (i.e. they were moving, rather than just standing over the brood). The queen continued to lick this fourth worker for about 30 minutes, until she left it, twitching, presumably to harden its cuticle.
This was very exciting for me, as in ten years of studying ants it was something I had never before witnessed. To be fair, I've only been keeping ants for about a year and it's the sort of thing that you need to be in the right place at the right time to see.
Once I got them home, at around about 18:00, there was a fifth ant! They are yellow, so I'm becoming more convinced that they are just the common L. flavus, but they're entertaining me.
Saturday, 12 July 2008
New species
I honestly can't remember the last time a new species of invertebrate was found in the UK (excluding bacteria from the definition). That makes it quite an event when something as significant as a slug is found, sort of the British equivalent of the Vu Quang ox.
The slug was described by specialists at the National Museum of Wales and Cardiff University, who named it Selenochlamys ysbryda, after ysbryd, the Welsh word for ghost. The beast is subterranean, lacking pigmentation and blind. It spends its time eating earthworms.
Sadly though, S. ysbryda is probably not native to the UK, as its nearest relatives live in the mountains of eastern Europe, Georgia and eastern Turkey. Because it may have invaded British shores, the National Museum of Wales are seeking any additional records, to see how widespread it is, and have provided an identification guide.
More information can be found at the National Museum of Wales website and BBC News.
The slug was described by specialists at the National Museum of Wales and Cardiff University, who named it Selenochlamys ysbryda, after ysbryd, the Welsh word for ghost. The beast is subterranean, lacking pigmentation and blind. It spends its time eating earthworms.
Sadly though, S. ysbryda is probably not native to the UK, as its nearest relatives live in the mountains of eastern Europe, Georgia and eastern Turkey. Because it may have invaded British shores, the National Museum of Wales are seeking any additional records, to see how widespread it is, and have provided an identification guide.
More information can be found at the National Museum of Wales website and BBC News.
Temnothorax saxonicus
It's been too long since I last added anything to this blog, so it is a shame that I write this in the middle of fixing a(nother) mistake. I originally thought this specimen was Temnothorax nylanderi, collected well outside of its known range, and had started to pursue this, involving other people.Instead it is Temnothorax saxonicus and I'm feeling quite sheepish. What's especially silly is that I collected T. saxonicus again just down the road from this specimen and had no problem with the identification.
I had taken these photographs and was sorting them out when I realised that the head was the wrong shape for T. nylanderi. On checking my measurements I discovered that I had originally incorrectly measured the head width. Thus, instead of the head length being less than 1.090 times the head width, the head was longer, which clearly made this T. saxonicus.
T. saxonicus is a rarity in Germany and is listed as 'highly endangered' (RLD2). The only place I collected it was just west of Poikham, Bavaria, though there is a slim chance that I may have other specimens unidentified. Seifert has told me that he expects this species in any comparable habitat along the river Donau (Danube).
Sunday, 22 June 2008
Ustilago maydis
Always on the look out for something really weird, in 2006 I found this grotesque thing. The general impression is of a set of giant rotting teeth.
It didn't take much tracking down. Many fungi are host specific, so if you can tell what the fungus is growing on you stand a chance of identifying it. This rises to a good chance when the fungus is as distinctive as this. In this case the host was maize Zea mays and the fungus is maize smut Ustilago maydis. The fungus was growing on the cobs.
Though U. maydis is common in North America, it's very rare in the UK. This was only the ninth time that it had been recorded. It's unlikely to be overlooked, so it's probably genuinely rare. The field it was found in had Z. mays growing with other exotic grasses that had obviously been sown for game cover. As a result, I suspect that the field had not been sprayed with fungicides that would ordinarily prevent U. maydis from growing.
Apparently, in North America U. maydis has traditionally been, and is still considered by some, to be a good edible fungus. In fact I read that some cultures prize the fungus more than the sweetcorn. Would you eat this?
It didn't take much tracking down. Many fungi are host specific, so if you can tell what the fungus is growing on you stand a chance of identifying it. This rises to a good chance when the fungus is as distinctive as this. In this case the host was maize Zea mays and the fungus is maize smut Ustilago maydis. The fungus was growing on the cobs.Though U. maydis is common in North America, it's very rare in the UK. This was only the ninth time that it had been recorded. It's unlikely to be overlooked, so it's probably genuinely rare. The field it was found in had Z. mays growing with other exotic grasses that had obviously been sown for game cover. As a result, I suspect that the field had not been sprayed with fungicides that would ordinarily prevent U. maydis from growing.
Apparently, in North America U. maydis has traditionally been, and is still considered by some, to be a good edible fungus. In fact I read that some cultures prize the fungus more than the sweetcorn. Would you eat this?
Saturday, 21 June 2008
I ♥ morphometrics
Put simply, morphometrics is 'measuring shapes'. In the normal, biological context this refers to the shape of study organisms. It is used by the taxonomist as a way of determining species boundaries.
Not long after I first encountered morphometrics I found myself working on tricky Lasius sp., which meant that I had to try to make sense of Seifert (1992). Seifert seems to be the Master of Morphometrics, in Europe at least, and the measurements and indices he uses are much more complicated than I had encountered up until that point. At first I really hated them. I couldn't understand why identification of Lasius needed to be so complicated - couldn't the species be better described and thus made easier to identify?
Over time morphometrics have grown on me and I've come to really appreciate them. I now even understand most of what Seifert does, though I will admit to being lost by some of the discriminants that he uses!
The most recent and one of the cleverest morphometric tools that I've encountered is from Seifert (2007), for separating the Formica picea/gagatoides/gagates group from the F. fusca/lemani group. I had already decided that the specimen that I was working on was F. fusca and knew that it definitely wasn't from the picea/gagatoides/gagates group, as these are all much shinier. However, in the couplet for separating the two groups I spotted an index that I had not encountered before: sqPDF.
Translating as best I can from the German, sqPDF is the square root of the distance between individual pubescence hairs within the triangle formed by the ocelli. PDF = l/n; where n = number of the pubescence hairs that intersect three transverse measuring lines of overall length l. The position of these measuring lines is shown in red in the picture below.
The thing that I found so intriguing about this is the pubescence hairs are extremely small, so I decided to see if I could make sqPDF work. I measured the length of the three lines combined to be 663µm and counted 68 hairs intersecting the three lines. This gave a PDF of 9.75µm, so the sqPDF was 3.12µm. This is within the range given for F. fusca/lemani (sqPDF 2.4-3.5µm) and outside of the range given for F. picea/gagatoides/gagates (spPDF 3.6-10.8µm), so the calculation worked!
This might seem like a lot of work, but it's not. Morphometrics are indisputable. I know from experience that you can get to the end of a key based on descriptions alone and be less than convinced that you've got the right answer. You then spend hours checking the other 'possibilities' had you taken different routes through the key. Morphometrics eliminate much of the doubt, give you a nice, neat, believable answer and ultimately save time.
If and when I finally write my first key, expect to see lots of numbers in the couplets!
Not long after I first encountered morphometrics I found myself working on tricky Lasius sp., which meant that I had to try to make sense of Seifert (1992). Seifert seems to be the Master of Morphometrics, in Europe at least, and the measurements and indices he uses are much more complicated than I had encountered up until that point. At first I really hated them. I couldn't understand why identification of Lasius needed to be so complicated - couldn't the species be better described and thus made easier to identify?
Over time morphometrics have grown on me and I've come to really appreciate them. I now even understand most of what Seifert does, though I will admit to being lost by some of the discriminants that he uses!
The most recent and one of the cleverest morphometric tools that I've encountered is from Seifert (2007), for separating the Formica picea/gagatoides/gagates group from the F. fusca/lemani group. I had already decided that the specimen that I was working on was F. fusca and knew that it definitely wasn't from the picea/gagatoides/gagates group, as these are all much shinier. However, in the couplet for separating the two groups I spotted an index that I had not encountered before: sqPDF.
Translating as best I can from the German, sqPDF is the square root of the distance between individual pubescence hairs within the triangle formed by the ocelli. PDF = l/n; where n = number of the pubescence hairs that intersect three transverse measuring lines of overall length l. The position of these measuring lines is shown in red in the picture below.
The thing that I found so intriguing about this is the pubescence hairs are extremely small, so I decided to see if I could make sqPDF work. I measured the length of the three lines combined to be 663µm and counted 68 hairs intersecting the three lines. This gave a PDF of 9.75µm, so the sqPDF was 3.12µm. This is within the range given for F. fusca/lemani (sqPDF 2.4-3.5µm) and outside of the range given for F. picea/gagatoides/gagates (spPDF 3.6-10.8µm), so the calculation worked!
This might seem like a lot of work, but it's not. Morphometrics are indisputable. I know from experience that you can get to the end of a key based on descriptions alone and be less than convinced that you've got the right answer. You then spend hours checking the other 'possibilities' had you taken different routes through the key. Morphometrics eliminate much of the doubt, give you a nice, neat, believable answer and ultimately save time.
If and when I finally write my first key, expect to see lots of numbers in the couplets!
Saturday, 14 June 2008
German ant collections
Another place visited; another list of ants collected. This time the area covered is a small part of Bavaria, as a result of a visit to the University of Regensburg. This list will develop over the next few weeks, as I have numerous specimens to look at. Once I have identified everthing I will send a full list of the records to the university and to any other interested parties.
It is possible to accurately identify some of the species listed in the field, so not all were actually collected. Some of them were collected by Marion Füßl, who found many species before I did and thus proved to be a very useful person to have around! Others were collected with a group of researchers from the university, who very kindly spent their public holiday showing me around. Yet more were collected by Christiane Wanke over the past few years and passed to me to identify.
Though I was not aiming specifically to collect rare species, the letters in red relate to species the German Red Data List (from: Seifert, 2007).
Dolichoderinae
Dolichoderus
quadripuntatus RLD3
Formicinae
Camponotus
ligniperda
Formica
cunicularia
fusca
pratensis
rufa
rufibarbis
sanguinea
Lasius
alienus
brunneus 1
emarginatus
flavus
fuliginosus
niger
platythorax
Plagiolepis
vindobonensis RLD2
Myrmicinae
Leptothorax
acervorum
Myrmecina
graminicola
Myrmica
lobicornis RLD3
rubra
ruginodis
rugulosa
sabuleti
scabrinodis
schencki RLD3
specioides RLD3
Solenopsis
fugax RLD3
Stenamma
debile
Tapinoma
erraticum RLD3
Temnothorax
affinis
corticalis RLD2
crassispinus
interruptus RLD3
parvulus RLD3
saxonicus RLD2
tuberum RLD2
unifasciatus
Tetramorium
impurum
1 Colony found containing the myrmecophilous woodlouse Platyarthrus hoffmannseggi.
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