The Stunning Candice Swanepoel Back On The Dashboard Again :3
Scientists have discovered a new ant species from the Philippines and named it the ‘pirate ant’ because of a distinctive dark stripe across its eyes that resembles a pirate eye patch.
Cardiocondyla pirata or the pirate ant has a bizarre pigmentation pattern in its eyes.
The female castes in the colonies of these species can be recognised by the dark stripe across the eyes that resembles a pirate eye patch, which inspired the authors to choose the name of the species.
“On a collection trip to the Philippines we looked for different species of the genus Cardiocondyla that is known for its astonishing morphological and behavioural diversity of male ants,” said researcher Sabine Frohschammer from Universitat Regensburg in Germany.
“Beside already known species we also detected a until then undiscovered species in the cleavage of big stones in a shady streambed.
“Due to the darkness of the rainforest and the translucent body parts of the tiny ants they were nearly invisible. Under bright light and a magnifier we detected the nice stripe across the eyes and therefore always referred to these species as ‘the pirates’,” Frohschammer said.
The adaptive significance of the extraordinary pigmentation pattern is still a mystery to scientists.
The poor vision and the fact that these ants mate in the dark exclude one of the most obvious hypotheses that the dark patch serve as a sign for sexual differentiation and thus a cue for recognition during mating.
A possible guess about the function of this bizarre pirate-like colouration pattern is that it serves as a tool to distract and confuse the enemy.
The combination of the dark stripes together with a rather translucent body when living could leave the impression in predators that the anterior and posterior body parts are in fact two separate objects.
The study was published in the journal Zookeys.text by Bussines-standart
Photo by g1.globo
Manatees, Florida
Photograph by Paul Nicklen, National Geographic
Propeller scars mark this manatee—graphic evidence of a too-close encounter with a boat. About one in four of Florida’s 360 manatee deaths in 2012 resulted from collisions. Slow-speed zones help, but some boaters resent the restrictions.
Jaguar, Ecuador
Photograph by Steve Winter, National Geographic
A jaguar on the hunt trips a camera trap at a spot frequented by piglike peccaries, a favorite prey. To the Waorani, one of the native groups in this area, jaguars are ancestral spirits that visit shamans in dreams to tell them where game is plentiful in the forest.
