While cataloging the Frost’s seventeen drawers of ants, I reached the last five, which were marked “unidentified Formicidae”. Just about as expected, it was mayhem. And not just from the 3,202 unsorted ants – after a quick scan of the drawers contents, a few of their non-ant inhabitants stood out, and they are, in the order of fairly understandable to befuddling:
- A handful of mutillids. The most ant-like of the non-ants.
- Two small carpenter bees:
- 42 parasitic hymenopterans, the smallest of which was amusingly right next to a Paraponera clavata queen:
- Two Tribolium beetles:
- An earwig:
- And 37 green lacewings…
It wasn’t all confusion, though. One cool find (almost as cool as that membracid) was a unit tray of some rather large ants collected on the Herre Oriental Expedition to British North Borneo of 1936-1937.
Yes, the specimen at the top left is a point-mounted head of Camponotus gigas, the giant forest ant.
How did we end up with an ichthyologist/lichenologist’s ants? I’ll have to track down the paperwork – sounds interesting! And why don’t I have 5 names?! I think we should start naming our expeditions after their leaders. The Deans Expedition to (British North?) Bear Meadows, for example.
We talked about ant-mimic membracids in Systematics! Nobody was quite sure how somebody could mistake one for an ant, yet here we are…