ArmyofInsects

01/18/2026

New Video about an old paper I read during my Stinging ants of CO project.

Why does Veromessor lobognathus appear where it does and where it doesn’t? And why was a peculiar claim made about its distribution in 1967?This video examin...

10/24/2025

Hey everyone! Just wanted to tell you guys about supporting the exhibition.

Thanks for all your support to everyone who has visited and experienced the exhibition. It was a labour that took over a year to construct and synthesises almost a decade of experience studying ants.

Attached is the webpage for the exhibition. There are several ways to support the exhibit, but I want to highlight 1 in particular:

The subscription to field notes.

This will be a monthly newsletter about all the wonderful adventures among ants I am having.

The price is $2 a month for the cheapest option and for $5 a month you recieve a quarterly ant specimen in the mail with details about what I’m up to and where the specimen is from.

I know subscriptions are sometimes hard to manage but if I could convince you to make a small sacrifice:

A latte at Starbucks is ~$6
An average coffee is ~$3
A bag of coffee can be $8-$30
A subscription to field notes for one year costs $24
A subscription for a year with the ants costs $60

If you give up purchasing one drink a month, you can help support my artwork and exhibit which keeps them free and able to be improved. If, like me, you generally purchase drinks in bulk and prefer to make your own, you probably spend much more than $60 a year on tea or coffees.

I am encouraging you to support me, and not follow the human inclination to think that ‘oh somebody else will do it.’ Field work gives you new photos every month, and the support tier 1 gives you online access to the exhibition. They are billed monthly and you can cancel any time.

https://www.armyofinsects.com/myrmecoportraiture

08/31/2025

Hello everyone, it's about time that I shared the ant exhibit I have been working on for almost a year now!

MYRMECOPORTAITURE is an ant exhibit that aims to explore the world through the eyes of ants. By engaging all our senses (except taste, unless you attend the reception!), we try to answer some of the questions there are to wonder about ants: What do ants eat? Do ants do anything that would fascinate me? Are ants important? How do we study ants? What ants are in the US? Do ants look different around the world? What do ants smell like? What does the queen ant actually do? How do we study ants? Do ants have cows? What can you discover about ants at the exhibition?

The heart of the exhibit is my award-winning ant macro photography, with detailed descriptions and real specimens provided alongside the photos. In addition to this, visitors can experience LIVE ANTS, music inspired by ants, stories about ants, interactive games for kids (and adults), a slideshow that features ants from different habitats around the world, a scavenger hunt, and interviews about ants.

The exhibit will be open in the Golding-Yang Gallery in Claypool Young Hall of Morehead State University from October 6- October 31, 2025. There will be a catered reception on the 22nd of October (2 days before my birthday!), which will start with a lecture at 4:00 PM EDT.

If you would like me to bring the exhibit to a museum near you, reach out and let's see what we can do!

Creating Myrmecoportraiture has been a labor of love, and I truly believe this exhibit can inspire wonder in people of all ages. If you’d like to support this work, please come and see, invite others, and let’s continue building curiosity about the hidden world of ants. Every bit of encouragement, attendance, and sharing helps this project grow.

This video features my first-ever ant colony, of Pseudomyrmex pallidus, aka pallid twig ants. These little wasp-like girls that live in twigs would go on to inspire the entire exhibit and change my life! An act of providence I never expected. This video features a queen laying an egg!

04/21/2021

This is a Pheidole sp. nest from larkspur Colorado, scanned using LiDAR and textured using images. Smaller nests don’t scan *as well* but they do scan nevertheless.

04/20/2021

The Solenopsis amblychila I posted about to start this series was found in canyon lake state park. Which was very cool.
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There was almost exclusively solenopsis here, I did find a handful of scorpions though! There is a solenopsis amblychila minor image from a worker I mounted.

amblychila
I also found some triorophus beetles here...
If you haven’t before I would definitely recommend visiting Arizona. @ Canyon Lake (Arizona)

04/20/2021

Occasionally, I get surprised by some of the ants I’ve encountered even if I’ve seen or expected to encounter them.
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While exploring Sabino Canyon I encountered Acromyrmex versicolor for the first time. Now this wasn’t my first time encountering leaf cutter ants, it wasn’t even my first time encountering acromyrmex, I actually found a queen in Costa Rica back in 2018. But tropical acromyrmex tends to be much less ‘polymorphic’ than more temperate species. So I was caught off guard by how polymorphic Acromyrmex versicolor was! Not nearly as distinctive as Atta cephalotes, but definitely more so than Atta texana, or Trachymyrmex septrionalis!
ant ..
Don’t know if I said above but I found these ants in (Tucson), in @ Sabino Canyon

04/16/2021

I went to Arizona during my spring break, I wasn’t posting anything during lent tho so over the next few days I’ll share some of my finds there.
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This is a solenopsis ablychila major from a colony I collected in Mesa, AZ. Specifically I found the colony (complete with queen) in canyon lake state park. S. Amblychila is socially parasitic, with queens parisitizing colonies of solenopsis xyloni during founding. has a great picture of S. amblychila somewhere, I’m not sure if it’s on his Instagram but it is on iNaturalist.
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if you haven’t posted your S. amblychila image I highly encourage you to do so!

04/14/2021

Acorn weevil larva from last fall

04/06/2021

Today I found a ot of diplura, which are not technically insects. They are part of the entognatha class/superclass it is unclear whether they’re a class on their own or if they’re an order in entocognatha. According to genetics I believe they’d be distinct. Anyways, they are pretty interesting, and you might just happen to notice a few of you flip some rocks over! There’s around 800 species of them!
@ Tallman Gulch Trail

02/24/2021

Weevil I found today, insects haven’t really come out yet and there’s a lot of snow expected tomorrow.