Monthly Archives: March 2013

Photo of the Week – March 21, 2013

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Last week, I found ant species #23.

Formica obscuriventris - aka ant species #23. It's a mound-building ant of prairies and savannas.

Formica obscuriventris – aka ant species #23. It’s a mound-building ant of prairies and savannas.

If you’ve followed this blog for a while, you know that we’re trying to inventory the ant and bee species (and others) in our Platte River Prairies.  Our main purpose is to see whether or not our restored prairies are providing habitat for the insect species living in our remnant prairies.  If they are, it’s likely that we’re succeeding in our attempt to use restoration to enlarge and reconnect fragmented prairies.  Last fall, I posted the results of the brief survey James Trager helped us with in the summer of 2012.  At that point, we’d found 22 species.

During a prescribed fire last week, we found a big ant mound.  The ants were understandably agitated by the fire…  I noted the location of the mound and went back the next day with my camera (and my new flash kit!) to get some photos.  I emailed James the photos to see if he could identify the ant species, and of course he could – Formica obscuriventris.  More importantly, it wasn’t a species we’d found last summer, so I could add it to our list!

The ant mound had multiple entrance holes. There was a lot of activity around this particular one.

The ant mound had multiple entrance holes. There was a lot of activity around this particular one.

The mound was in a restored prairie, which was good to see.  Of the 23 species we’ve found so far now, 4 of them are tree-dwellers and 19 are prairie ants.  Of the 19 prairie ant species, we have found 14 in restored prairie.  I’m hoping we just haven’t looked hard enough to find the other 5 in restored prairie (very possible, given our limited sampling effort so far).  If that turns out to be true, it would be a great indication that our restored prairies are acting as new habitat for those ants, and enlarging/reconnecting formerly fragmented prairies.

Formica obscuriventris

Ants carrying the carcass of one of their compatriots.

I’m sure many of you could have identified this ant species without James’ help, but I couldn’t and am grateful to him.  He pointed out that it’s the boxy cross-section of the clypeus that separates this species from a couple other possibilities.  …But you probably already knew that…

Here's the mound, with a 72mm lens cap for scale.

Here’s the mound, with a 72mm lens cap for scale.

For those of you interested in the photography side of this, I photographed the ants with a 105mm Nikon macro lens on a Nikon D300s camera.  The images above are variously cropped to show the ants better. 

It was a partly cloudy day, and the light kept switching from dark cloudy to bright sunny – neither of which was great for photography.  To mitigate that, I used a diffuser (thin white cloth on a big collapsable plastic circle about 2 ft in diameter) to reduce the light when the sun popped out and then used flash to fill in the rest of the light needed to use a fast shutter speed.  My flash kit is a Nikon R1 Close-up Speedlight system, which has two small flashes – mounted on either side of the lens. 

…I might start to like this whole flash photography thing.

Prairies Forever? Collaborative Conservation for Pheasants, Pollinators, and People.

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Effective prairie conservation requires a collaborative effort among a wide variety of interests, including ecologists, naturalists, birdwatchers, ranchers, educators, hunters, and others.  Each of these might approach prairie conservation from a different perspective, but they have more in common than you might expect. 

People outside Nebraska might be surprised to learn that one of the strongest forces for prairie conservation in our state is Pheasants Forever.  Pheasants Forever, along with its sister organization Quail Forever, is helping protect, restore, and manage prairies in multiple ways, including:

–          Private lands biologists (17) who work with landowners on habitat projects, providing both advice and access to federal, state, and private cost-share assistance.

–          Promoting and facilitating the use of prescribed fire across the state by providing equipment and training opportunities, helping to establish and coordinate prescribed fire associations, and organizing landowner tours to showcase the value of prescribed fire.

–          Promoting the use of, and helping to provide, diverse native seed mixtures for habitat restoration/improvement projects.

–          Organizing workshops and field tours on habitat management, prairie restoration, plant identification, and pollinator conservation.

Pheasant hunters

These pheasant hunters enjoyed a very successful day in a recently-restored high-diversity prairie.  The Nature Conservancy’s Platte River Prairies, Nebraska.

The man who has provided most of the energy for these efforts for more than 20 years is Pete Berthelsen, who has just stepped into a new role for Pheasants Forever, Inc. and Quail Forever; the Director of Habitat Partnerships.  He is now charged with taking the kinds of habitat partnerships and statewide habitat programs he helped develop in Nebraska and replicating those programs across the organization at the national level.

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