#naturalists

I spotted an unfamiliar ant a few weeks back (which isn't an entirely rare occurrence as I don't know ants well) here in Florida, got a few pics, moved on. After posting to iNat, it turns out it is kind of a rare one, though they couldn't be sure from my pics which of two species it was. So I went back to the site, found another, and got species confirmed: Temnothorax bradleyi, an acorn ant species which nests in pines. So that was fun on its own!

But here's the part that makes things extra rewarding for me: Finding a thing, then learning from a scientist about a related rarer thing and where to look for it, and then finding that as well. The scientist on iNaturalist who positively identified T. bradleyi gave a piece of information that helped confirm the species: T. bradleyi nests in *living* pines (where I found them), and the other similar-looking species, T. smithi, nests in *standing dead* pines.

So I had a new quest. I went searching a location in Florida which seemed like a likely habitat with many dead/burnt out pines, and found T. smithi!

There does not seem to have been any photographs of either species alive before mine, according to the scientist, so that's also cool to do!

The part where I learn about a thing by finding it, then get a whole other tiny world opened up, with creatures I've either overlooked or not encountered at all, will never get old to me. It's so damn fun, and rewarding. So many creatures to find, so many who've only had their moment in an obscure scientific paper seen by almost no one - maybe never even seen alive; now getting their own page with pictures on iNaturalist or wherever else... 🥹

It just makes me happy. That is all. ❤️

So here's Temnothorax bradleyi, which nests on living pines:

(diagnostic feature visible in the studio shot: the short rear-facing spines on the back of the thorax)

And here is Temnothorax smithi:

(the thorax spines are longer in this species, visible in the studio shots)

Cataglyphis lutea (UAE and parts of India) is a desert dwelling ant, the photos of this ant on iNaturalist caught my eye, since, like Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus (the Spider Ant of Australia), this these little ants fold their gasters over their mesonoma.

Very little is known about Cataglyphis lutea, shockingly little. I can't even find a mention of gaster folding in any of the brief descriptions of this ant.

*This* is why descriptions are not enough.

Yes we have identified thousands of species of ants, but for many all that means in a single dry sample in a museum drawer and five or six sentences describing the ant. We know nothing of the ants behavior, their interactions with other ants and arthropods, their role in the environment.

Leptomyrmex erythrocephalus, is called the "spider ant" but it's not even clear if this ant is trying to mimic a spider, or mimic anything at all. As for what C. lutea is doing? These are her mysteries.

(photos by Jonghyn Park and TimL)

I was able to find a paper about the genus Cataglyphis that uses some serious geometry to make the case that raising their gaster may improve mobility. But, this paper did not cover ants that fold the gaster all the way over as these ants do.

“I’m an expert botanist but FUCK grasses”

*entomologist on the ground crying in a pile of ant-mimic wasps and wasp-mimic flies and spider-mimic ants*