ANTS

09/10/24

Because I have declared this week as world ant week, here are three pictures of ants I took past days. :)

For the first time I’ve attempted to combine reflected light and fluorescence in one image, as shown in the first photo. The advantage of (auto)fluorescence is that details and structures are highlighted that would have been missed with another kind of illumination. The eye is showing the strongest autofluorescence (emitting light), the long hairs above the mandibles and the attachment of the antenna as well. Magnifications 4x and 9x objective. The subject is a black ant. (1st and 2nd photo). The carpenter ant can be seen on the 3rd photo. Fortunately the size of a carpenter ant is limited to half an inch, otherwise coming across them would be a scary experience. The head pictured here measures less then 2mm, you can see the chitin structure and below the mandibles the palps.