@alexwild@mastodon.online
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alexwild

@alexwild@mastodon.online

Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin. Photographer of more living ant species than any other person, and still hasn't reached even 10% of them.

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alexwild, to random
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Heterponera relicta, a poorly-known predatory ant from Queensland, Australia.

alexwild, to random
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A queen rover ant, Brachymyrmex patagonicus, has a brief antennal conversation with a worker. Austin, Texas.

alexwild,
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@NatureMC Thanks! These are absolutely tiny ants.

alexwild, to random
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The weather forecast in Austin during the April 8th eclipse is not looking great. Rain, thunderstorms.

alexwild,
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On the other hand, we’re still in drought.

alexwild, to random
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Kind of amazing that Republican propaganda just needlessly killed hundreds of thousands of Americans, and it’s not even a campaign issue.

https://www.npr.org/2023/07/25/1189939229/covid-deaths-democrats-republicans-gap-study

alexwild, to nature
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The highlight of my Easter was this amazing mimic that showed up in the yard. Spilomyia texana, the Texas hornet fly.

alexwild, to Texas
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The always lovely Texas Redbud Borer beetle is not even slightly boring. It's visiting a spring buttercup. New photo from the new wildflower patch.

alexwild, to Texas
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There will be first amendment lawsuits if students are expelled from public universities because they failed to show sufficient loyalty to a small foreign country on the other side of the planet.

Fuck Greg Abbott, Fuck Israel, and Fuck anyone who tries to hurt my students for daring to stand against an ongoing genocide.

https://www.kvue.com/article/news/politics/texas-abbott-executive-order-antisemitism-universities/269-d9d438f5-a45f-4d9b-98ba-a63090893f81

alexwild, to random
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Joe Lieberman was one of many rich Americans who used his status to make life harder for almost everyone else in the country.

His death is preceded by the preventable deaths of many he could have helped save, but didn’t, because doing so might make billionaires less wealthy.

alexwild,
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Joe Leiberman's legacy.

alexwild, to random
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Found this sleeping Nomada bee yesterday, clamped to a yaupon holly leaf. Those eyes!

alexwild, to random
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Few things betray the wasp ancestry of ants more than ant males. A gallery:

https://www.alexanderwild.com/Ants/Natural-History/Male-Ants

alexwild, to random
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A silver lining of all the generative AI is that the spammy YouTube accounts that used to infringe my copyrights now just use crappy AI images.

alexwild, to Florida
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More autocratic political interference in Florida, with faculty being investigated for sharing opinions about a ruling party-funded propaganda program.

https://www.chronicle.com/article/u-of-florida-investigates-whether-professors-interfered-with-western-civ-center

alexwild,
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There is indeed a campus free speech crisis. And that crisis is not students having opinions. It is powerful Republican party figures purging and censoring speech that critiques its base of power.

alexwild,
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Not long ago, a Republican politician in Texas got a college professor fired for a single tweet.

https://www.thefire.org/news/victory-collin-college-pay-thousands-history-professor-fired-tweets

alexwild, to random
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This rove beetle, hunting an ant while also mating, can really multi-task. Mindo, Ecuador.

alexwild, to photography
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Excited for the upcoming firefly season! Here's a gallery from past years:

https://www.alexanderwild.com/Insects/Fireflies

alexwild, to random
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Here's an ant I don't see very often: Crematogaster rifelna, a small acrobat ant known only from south Texas and northeastern Mexico. Here, two nestmates are engaged in trophallaxis.

futurebird, (edited ) to random
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"Colonies found under items on the ground can be drenched with a few ounces of insecticide."

Very disappointed to see that TA&MU is recommending "treating" Dorymyrmex bureni ant colonies. These ants love to attack and eat invasive fire ant queens and do not infest human dwellings. They are not pest ants, but one of the most valuable & charming native species. I wonder what other beneficial native insects are also on the kill list of the Agricultural & Life Sciences website! Boo! 0 of 10 stars.

alexwild,
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@futurebird Their taxonomy is totally off.

But so is everyone's, it turns out: https://escholarship.org/uc/item/8s35s19s

alexwild, to random
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The inflated beetle, Cysteodemus, is one of the most recognizeable insects of the southwestern deserts. Larvae are parasites of soil-nesting bees. Anza Borrego, California.

alexwild, to Texas
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This is what a billionaire-funded, partisan Republican academic unit looks like:

https://civicleadership.utexas.edu/

alexwild,
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All this talk of "Liberty" from people whose main goal is the forcible subjugation of women into breeding cattle to produce a stock of white Christian children.

alexwild,
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Awfully strange for a bunch of "small government" types to suck down millions of public dollars in a government-mandated department, dedicated to ruling party propaganda for which no real scholarly demand exists.

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