7 replies to this topic

[gcsnelling]

This has been rattling around in my mind for a while now. Requests for ant identifications are very common,, likely one of the most common posts here Although I do not mind helping determine what ant is being dealt with I am not one to just hand out an Id willy nilly. I like to see some homework being done first. So with that in mind I have a couple of thoughts.

 

1. Research the ants in your area. Ant wiki, antmaps and ant web are great places to start. You can easily get an idea of what genera occur near you which leads to point number two

 

2. Research the ants in your area. Once you have figured out what your options are, go see what literature is available for those groups. There are great bodies of literature out there, a large percentage of which is available online these days.

 

As an example. Snelling, R. R. 2006. Taxonomy of the Camponotus festinatus complex in the United States of America (Hymenoptera: Formicidae). Myrmecologische Nachrichten 8: 83-97.

 

Some groups are easier to Id than others, you may have to be content with a genus Id.

 

3. Get yourself some sort of half way decent magnification tool. Decent scopes are not overly expensive these days, most cameras and some phones can provide some decent macro images.

 

4 Learn some ant anatomy, If you want to get an Id you have to know what part of the ant you are talking about, esp if trying to describe it to someone else.

 

Last but not least, learn the freakin proper names for the genus/species your are talking about, I can guarantee you with 100 percent certainty if you ask a real professional myrmecologist about tetra this and fraggle a great many of them are going to look at you like you are a complete idiot and not give you the time of day.

 

 

[RushmoreAnts]

I like to see some homework being done first.

Usually when I post an ID request I'm narrowing it down between two species, or within a species group. I can narrow it down to at least the species group. Perhaps a message such as this should be made very clear when posting an ID request.

[VoidElecent]

Antwiki has some very clear and helpful keys you can follow. If getting to species is too difficult, the genus one should be a good place to start. If you live in the Northeast, or even if you don't, A Field Guide to the Ants of New England is a spectacular place to start. That book has taught me so much about identification and distribution, I carry it around practically everywhere now.

 

And to Gordon's point re: proper nomenclature, BatSpiderFish published a great post that I recommend every study until they are confident with the terminology. This won't help with naming per se, but it does cover essential paradigms in myrmecology.

[Domagoj]

Speaking of identifying, has anybody thought of making an ID tool where the user could input certain parameters and get a list of species that fit the parameters?

A quick mockup (don't murder me for drop down menu choices, I'm no ant expert):

Of course the tool would probably not be strong enough to give positive ID, but it could narrow down the search. Perhaps it could also provide images for suggested species so the user can try to do the final comparison themselves.

I know it's a big job, but it's not particularly complex. Once the framework is done (filtering the tags), the main work is populating the database.

[dspdrew]

Fraggle

 

People need to learn when to use funny terms, and when to use proper terms.

[Skwiggledork]

Speaking of identifying, has anybody thought of making an ID tool where the user could input certain parameters and get a list of species that fit the parameters?

A quick mockup (don't murder me for drop down menu choices, I'm no ant expert):

ant id.png

Of course the tool would probably not be strong enough to give positive ID, but it could narrow down the search. Perhaps it could also provide images for suggested species so the user can try to do the final comparison themselves.

I know it's a big job, but it's not particularly complex. Once the framework is done (filtering the tags), the main work is populating the database.

This would honestly be amazing.

[ANTdrew]

I sincerely doubt I’ll ever meet a professional myrmecologist. I shorten some genus names when I’m having a friendly dialogue with someone. I’ll stop if it bothers people.

[BlueLance213]

I mean what your asking for isn't exactly hard, it can actually be done simply in an Excel spreadsheet, the problem is just the sheer variance, I have seen people posting/selling on places bi colour ants etc or ants with different coloured heads, I don't know enough about ants to say if two identical looking ants with the only difference being one is brown headed and the other black shows they are different species, or they are the same with a twist.

 

The catch is I say its simple, not everyone has excel, some people have numbers etc, google doc is probably most widely available, and the same goes for if its a program, but I am pretty sure there are some languages that work the same regardless of OS

 

That was in reference to Domagoj, I dno how to edit in their quote XD

Edited by BlueLance213, August 4 2020 - 2:01 PM.