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What are drones?
Most of our discussions so far have been on female ants (i.e. workers and queens) with little focus on male ants (drones). This is not because I dislike drones or find them uninteresting. The tragic fact is that there is far less research on male ants than on workers or queens. There are several reasons…
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Ant communication (and how to take advantage of it)
The mission You have been tasked by the secret shadow government to retrieve a special microchip that holds all the information needed to replicate the original Doritos taco flavor. If this chip were to fall into the wrong hands, it may cause the collapse of society as we know it. Luckily, you are a highly…
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The Rise of a Queen
In my post The Wonderful World of Ants, we discussed some general ant concepts. In this post, I would like to present an ant colony from its formation to death. Since there is enormous diversity in colony formation, I will keep it as general as possible. If you want to read more about the diversity…
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The Wonderful World of Ants
When I think back on my childhood as a young biologist, a few memories pop up that point to my inevitable career as an entomologist (insect researcher) and parasite/pathologist (more on that later). One of these memories is of me and my dad sitting on the bathroom floor in my childhood home and watching a…
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Fungal Functions
Written by Brianna Santamaria From supporting plant growth to breaking down waste, fungi perform a large variety of important functions in our environment. We would need an entire library to discuss all the roles fungi play in the world around us. However, we are limited in time (and space on this website), so in line…
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Forever Fungi
Forever in humanity As stated in our previous post, fungi have been present within our civilizations for as long as we can find solid proof for it. Which is currently about 18,000 years ago. In 2015 dental records of human remains from that period of time showed fungal spores. This means that they were at…
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Fungilicious
Written by Brianna Santamaria Important note: Do not consume any mushroom that cannot be readily identified Of Mushrooms and People Mushrooms: delectable treasures or deadly tragedies? Divine remedies or destructive rogues? Symbols of opulence or a mark of poverty? Since the beginning of civilization cultures have grappled with their perception of these inscrutable organisms. In…
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Mushrooms and Toadstool, must be Fall
If you had not noticed, summer is over and it is getting colder and wetter. To paraphrase Julius Caesar: guttula iacta est. Or to put it in plain English: the droplet has been thrown. We can no longer go back and will have to see this fallthrough. So, to help you through this perilous time,…
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Yawning
An involuntary reflex that can be interpreted as rude in some cultures, as a sign of tiredness and boredom in others or as a signal of anxiety in non-human creatures. Everyone knows what yawning is, but what is yawning really? These are the questions keeping me up at night. Probably the reason I yawn a…
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Slow worm
Anguis fragilis, Hazelworm, Blindschleiche, Orvet, Lucion Intro An animal that is neither a worm, nor a snake, yet is called one and often confused with the other. Why is it neither a worm, nor a snake? Because it is a lizard. Unlike worms, it has a spine, and unlike snakes, it has eyelids. This beautiful…