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Thrifty Thursday: A Herd of Hoppers

This article was published in Scientific American’s former blog network and reflects the views of the author, not necessarily those of Scientific American


Thrifty Thursdays feature photographs taken with equipment costing less than $500.

[Panasonic Lumix DMC-ZS3 - $241]

A prairie ant (Formica montana) tends treehoppers (Publilia sp.) for honeydew on the back of a sun-soaked leaf. This relationship between ant shepherds and bug sheep goes back millions of years and is always a rich subject for compelling natural history images.


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To capture this shot, I avoided using the inadequate on-camera flash on my inexpensive digicam. Instead, I looked for a patch of dramatic natural light.

[I have more ant/bug photographs in my online galleries.]

Alex Wild is Curator of Entomology at the University of Texas at Austin, where he studies the evolutionary history of ants. In 2003 he founded a photography business as an aesthetic complement to his scientific work, and his natural history photographs appear in numerous museums, books and media outlets.

More by Alex Wild