1088 replies to this topic

[Voidley]

I envy photos like that. I’ve recently been playing around with macro photography myself and you inspired me to share my attempts! There’s definitely room for improvement on my end, but I am using lens reversal to get these photos, not an actual macro lens and I was never expecting to get this much zoom out of the camera, so I'm still pretty happy with how they came out. These are both pinned specifies, but I want to try photographing some live subjects in the future.

 

Crematogaster queen alate (13 photo focus stack)

p.s. what species is this? Caught 9/1/23 in NY

 

Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen at ~3.5x magnification (14 photo focus stack)

 

Camponotus pennsylvanicus queen front angle (14 photo focus stack)

[The_Gaming-gate]

Went up to Gainesville and got some horrible pictures of a Psuedomyrmex, something I forgot the name for, a Tapinoma/Brachymyrmex worker, a red mite, Crematogaster, and a forest roach.

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Edited by The_Gaming-gate, April 2 2024 - 12:00 AM.

[ReignofRage]

Myrmecocystus christineae! These are the first color pictures of live workers and possibly the first pictures of live workers in general. This is a little-known species that is known from a small range in California and a single record in Nevada. They're in the M. pyramicus-group along side M. ewarti and M. pyramicus. M. christineae appears to be the smallest of the three when it comes to maximum worker size, with majors being around 3.5 mm.

 

Edited by ReignofRage, April 3 2024 - 8:11 PM.

[kalimant]

What I keyed to Pheidole dentigula in KIssimeee, FL , but of course I'm no expert in taxonomy.

 

Majors have head widths around 0.8 mm and total BL of around 2.5 mm

Minors are around 1.5 mm in total body length

 

Really tiny ants.

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Edited by kalimant, May 3 2024 - 6:49 AM.

[kalimant]

Here's another "rare" ant, seems to be the only thing I post now, haha.

 

Pheidole clydei.

 

 

P. clydei is pretty neat, it nests strictly within laminar cracks in massive boulders and rocky canyon walls, and due to this the colonies are far separated from the soil below the rocks. What's more interesting is that they live in extremely low-elevation, harsh desert areas such as Death Valley, high-elevation mountains that receive snow, and pretty much everywhere in between. I theorize it's due to the inner of the rocks not varying much in moisture or temperature despite drastic differences in outside conditions. Furthermore, like the genus is named after, P. clydei is a facultative granivore and often take in seeds during their nearly-24 hour long foraging period. Foraging seems to only cease when it gets too hot or too cold, with no preference to time of day. Minors do all of the foraging and majors rarely leave the nest - their main job appears to only be defense and to aid in breaking down larger food items. Colony entrances usually are bare and lack any midden or tumulus, however sometimes the rock is shaped just right for a small bit of tumulus and/or midden to be present. Colonies only have a single entrance and pressumable the soil in the crack is excavated out deeper and deeper into the rock. It's hard to estimate colony size even after observing dozens of colonies for days at a time, but it seems to be around one to three thousand workers. It also is presumed that colonies are haplometrotic. The gyne photographed was found after a nuptial flight while she was roaming a boulder searching for a crack to nest in.

 

Edit: Here's a picture of one of the various areas I surveyed colonies in.

 

 

Interesting species, and I like your observations of them. The gallery pics are gone though.

 

Another pic of what I keyed to be Pheidole dentigula. Three majors working on a bit of food. Majors are tiny, 2.5 mm TL, 0.8 mm HW. Taken in Kissimme, FL, next to a lawn in a suburban location.

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Edited by kalimant, May 3 2024 - 7:17 AM.

[kalimant]

Since pictures of living Pheidole psammophila don't seem to exist anywhere, here's some I took during distribution surveying I did. P. psammophila is the second largest Pheidole in California, the runner up to P. barbata. Pardon the unfocused areas, my focal distance is miniscule with the setup I have.

 

 

Nice macros! You are lucky to be in the West Coast....lotsa nice Pheidole species.

When I did some anting in AZ years back, managed to actually see P. militicida...now THAT was super special.

Edited by kalimant, May 3 2024 - 11:55 AM.

[WideBrownLand]

Life has gotten in the way a bit lately and I haven't been able to go looking for ants as much as I wanted. Here is a poor Rhytidoponera sp. that is loaded with mites that I came across in a compost pile. Seville, Vic, Australia.

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Edited by WideBrownLand, May 5 2024 - 2:47 PM.

[ReignofRage]

Interesting species, and I like your observations of them. The gallery pics are gone though.

 

Thanks for letting me know. I fixed them; the pictures should be there now.

[kalimant]

Pheidole obscurithorax in Central Florida. This is considered to be the largest Pheidole in the state, with major workers having head widths of more than 1.5 mm, and total body lengths of greater than 5 mm.

I found nests of this species in a suburban community in Central Florida.

 

I created a new Pheidole-specific web site and the first post is about my recent encounters with this species.

 

https://keyapa.com/p...05/hello-world/

 

My camera is an old Nikon D3400, and for macrophotography I use a Tokina AT-X pro lens.

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Edited by kalimant, May 5 2024 - 6:13 PM.

[kalimant]

So this was taken in 2004, way before I had a macro and using a point and shoot camera I think, so even though the ants are relatively large (the super major was likely more than 1.5 cm), might suffer some.

 

Carebara diversa raid kills a ponerine ant in the Tagaytay region of the Philippines.

 

These mass raiding highly polymorphic myrmicines are quite obvious once you get out of the more suburban and urban areas. Look for their raids in park areas like the Tagaytay picnic areas, or in the Makiling Forest Reserve in Los Banos. 

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Edited by kalimant, May 6 2024 - 4:40 AM.

[kalimant]

More from 2004...processed through photoshop looks like...

 

Again, no macro lens, and these are large ants, around 1 cm.

 

Oecophylla smaragdina are everywhere in the trees in rural locations in the Philippines. They maintain strong territories and the ants stand guard even on the ground near their trees and pretty much try to catch anything that moves close. Caterpillars are probably caught  a lot.

 

I have seen them easily raid wasp nests as well, and they get into fights with Solenopsis geminata on the ground too.

 

This species is one of the first ants I obsessed on when I was a kid. They had a leaf or silk nest on a wall of our home in Indonesia.

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Edited by kalimant, May 7 2024 - 2:59 AM.

[kalimant]

Pheidole adrianoi in Central Florida, USA. Tiny tiny ants (minors barely above 1 mm)

https://keyapa.com/p...two-toned-ants/

 

Edited by kalimant, May 13 2024 - 2:40 PM.

[The_Gaming-gate]

So this was taken in 2004, way before I had a macro and using a point and shoot camera I think, so even though the ants are relatively large (the super major was likely more than 1.5 cm), might suffer some.

Carebara diversa raid kills a ponerine ant in the Tagaytay region of the Philippines.

These mass raiding highly polymorphic myrmicines are quite obvious once you get out of the more suburban and urban areas. Look for their raids in park areas like the Tagaytay picnic areas, or in the Makiling Forest Reserve in Los Banos.

Pheidole majors can be that big?! The largest one I’ve seen was about 4 mm, where did you find such a large one?

[ANTdrew]

So this was taken in 2004, way before I had a macro and using a point and shoot camera I think, so even though the ants are relatively large (the super major was likely more than 1.5 cm), might suffer some.

Carebara diversa raid kills a ponerine ant in the Tagaytay region of the Philippines.

These mass raiding highly polymorphic myrmicines are quite obvious once you get out of the more suburban and urban areas. Look for their raids in park areas like the Tagaytay picnic areas, or in the Makiling Forest Reserve in Los Banos.

Pheidole majors can be that big?! The largest one I’ve seen was about 4 mm, where did you find such a large one?

Carebara, not Pheidole.

[kalimant]

 

So this was taken in 2004, way before I had a macro and using a point and shoot camera I think, so even though the ants are relatively large (the super major was likely more than 1.5 cm), might suffer some.

Carebara diversa raid kills a ponerine ant in the Tagaytay region of the Philippines.

These mass raiding highly polymorphic myrmicines are quite obvious once you get out of the more suburban and urban areas. Look for their raids in park areas like the Tagaytay picnic areas, or in the Makiling Forest Reserve in Los Banos.

Pheidole majors can be that big?! The largest one I’ve seen was about 4 mm, where did you find such a large one?

 

 

That Carebara species used to be Pheidologeton...it is NOT a Pheidole sp.

I admit when I first saw it I was thinking it was Pheidole...until I saw that it was very polymorphic, and read more about them. They are so-called marauder ants, and do mass raids just like army ants.

Some of the biggest Pheidole spp are here:

https://keyapa.com/p...e-in-the-world/

Edited by kalimant, May 16 2024 - 8:45 AM.

[kalimant]

Another Oecophylla smaragdina pic from 2004. No macro (the ants are around 1 cm in total length so quite big), and heavily photoshopped because the camera was not good.

 

I have no idea how they caught the stingless bee (?), but they are using their usual technique of spread eagling the prey.

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Edited by kalimant, May 16 2024 - 8:42 AM.

[kalimant]

A colony of Pheidole dispar that I found getting ready for a nuptial flight. Apparently this species isn't readily seen. Landsborough, Queensland.

 

Good looking species. Not much known indeed. Was hoping you could add to how they live.

 

Btw, you take awesome macros, you need to create an album blog somewheres of them ;-)

[The_Gaming-gate]

So this was taken in 2004, way before I had a macro and using a point and shoot camera I think, so even though the ants are relatively large (the super major was likely more than 1.5 cm), might suffer some.

Carebara diversa raid kills a ponerine ant in the Tagaytay region of the Philippines.

These mass raiding highly polymorphic myrmicines are quite obvious once you get out of the more suburban and urban areas. Look for their raids in park areas like the Tagaytay picnic areas, or in the Makiling Forest Reserve in Los Banos.

Pheidole majors can be that big?! The largest one I’ve seen was about 4 mm, where did you find such a large one?

Carebara, not Pheidole.

Oh, good. I was scared a giant ant would find me in my sleep

[Ernteameise]

Some pictures of my beautiful new Camponotus lateralis.

They are an arboreal species from Croatia (Southern Europe) and they live together on the same trees with Crematogaster scutellaris, using the same trails and foraging sites. So this Camponotus has become a mimic of that Crematogaster species.

I apologize that my pictures are not as good quality as most of yours, since I only use my old digital camera.

 

 

 

[kalimant]

Some pictures of my beautiful new Camponotus lateralis.

They are an arboreal species from Croatia (Southern Europe) and they live together on the same trees with Crematogaster scutellaris, using the same trails and foraging sites. So this Camponotus has become a mimic of that Crematogaster species.

I apologize that my pictures are not as good quality as most of yours, since I only use my old digital camera.

 

Good enough! My old digital camera was ok when it came to species that were a bit larger. I bought a macro lens for my DSLR when I realized I wanted to take better pics of tiny ants and other things.

When you say "mimic", do you mean it starts looking like the Crematogaster? Or mimic in the general sense?