Mosquito in Flight

Mosquitos are not nearly as awesome as ants, and they are pretty much evil (as I establish here). But a new study on this family of insects has revealed how mosquitos fly in the rain - the video in the article is rather fascinating.

I’ve Got Rhythm – So Does Nature

NPR has an intriguing clip about shared rhythm in nature and composed works: here. Not about ants, but interesting, nonetheless!

Myrmecology at Mawangdui

The Mawangdui texts, when discovered, revealed quite a bit about medicine and other aspects of ancient Chinese culture previously unknown. As I was reading over some of the items in the medical text, which dates to the 2nd century BCE, I came across some entomological treatments.

For “Infant-cord Rigidity”, likely some sort of infant ailment, the instructions for concocting the medicinal cure say to “take anthill loam and smith it.” For “Inguinal swelling” (including hernias), the text instructs to “wrap hive-bee eggs [larvae] that have been dried in the dark in cloth”. Alternatively, one can “at dawn take one bee egg [larva]. Soak it in one cup of fine gruel vinegar and give it to the person to drink.”

While such treatments found in these texts are, to my knowledge, rarely implemented today, insects are still being used in attempts to alleviate the illnesses of man. For example, leaf cutter ants have antibiotics, and current research on these ants and their antibacterial mutualists may ultimately contribute to the development of more effective antibiotics for humans. Alas, I have yet to learn of any positive medicinal effects provided by bee larvae. But feel free to comment if you have any pertinent anecdotes!

Citation:

Donald Harper, Early Chinese Medical Literature: The Mawangdui Medical Manuscripts (London: Kegan Paul International 1998), 221-304.

Monday Mandarin Meanings – Kǒngzǐ shuō…

A friend of mine, who came to the U.S. from China a couple of years ago, is leaving on Wednesday to go to Indiana for a job opportunity. This has reminded me of one of  Confucius’ sayings:

In translation: “Is it not a pleasure to have friends who come from afar?” The characters here are traditional, because the saying is in Classical Chinese. Classical Chinese is often more compact than modern Mandarin, and one character can have a whole host of different meanings. But the meaning of this saying is clear, and it rings true from antiquity to modern times! 再见, 我的朋友!

 

Ngram Nquiry

The author of this blog recently informed me of a program called Google Ngram. This program allows users to input various terms and will output a graph showing something like the frequency of books which contain those terms, plotted over time. So I decided to test my theory of Myrmecological Supremacy:

Click on the image to see more detail. The blue line is “ant”, while the others are beetle, grasshopper, mosquito, dragonfly, wasp, and cockroach. While “ant” ultimately reigns supreme, there are two time periods during which “mosquito” is more prevalent than “ant”. However, note that these periods correspond exactly to World War I and World War II. In other words, mosquitoes are harbingers of death and destruction.

The results of this rigorous, scientific study allow us to confidently reject the null hypothesis (ants ≤ other insects) in favor of the alternative (ants >> other insects).

Photographs by FF

Formicidae Fantasy now has a new tab: “Images”. In it, you will find images. I don’t have too many at this point, but I hope to expand my collection in the future. Enjoy!

New Look

I’ve decided to try out a new look for Formicidae Fantasy. I hope that my many readers will not find this too shocking! I haven’t settled on a banner image yet, but the current one has ants, so I certainly could do worse.

From China to Iowa

If you were the Chinese Vice President visiting the United States, where would you visit? According to NPR, Iowa.

Note

My brother has launched a “second iteration” of his blog, Egalicontrarian. It has few posts at the moment, but, while it will rarely cover entophilosophy,  it is still a blog to add to your bookmarks!

Honor Among Ants

As I was looking at the Pheidole specimens on AntWeb yesterday, I came across a species named Pheidole harrisonfordi, which goes to show that taxonomists can be fun, too! According to E.O. Wilson, who named the species, he gave Ford the honor ”in recognition of his outstanding contribution in service and support to tropical conservation” (AntWeb page).