Entomology Chairperson Bill Ravlin’s photography featured on calendar

MSU Entomology's Bill Ravlin's photographs were featured on the cover and month of August in a calendar given out to nearly 7,000 attendees of the International Congress of Entomology meeting, hosted by Entomological Society of America.

A winter ant tending a two-marked treehopper on an Eastern redbud tree.

When the Entomological Society of America hosted the International Congress of Entomology meeting in September, they included a calendar of lively insect images as a gift for each of the nearly 7,000 attendees from around the globe. The image featured on the cover and for the month of August was taken by MSU Entomology’s Bill Ravlin. He is an avid photographer and specializes in insect and bird photography.

The featured image shows a winter ant tending a two-marked treehopper feeding on an Eastern redbud tree. The interaction is a classic example of a symbiotic relationship. Ants provide treehoppers with protection from predation and treehoppers provide ants with an easily accessible food source in the form of honeydew. Winter ants convert honeydew to fats and nutrients that are “stored in corpulent workers” who transport this high-energy food source back to their colony to feed developing larvae. Winter ants are unique in that they only venture out of their colony usually during the spring and fall months associated with moderate temperatures thus, avoiding predation, encounters with other ants, and desiccation.

Sphex wasp on flower

Another Ravlin image of a Sphex wasp settling on a flower.

View more of Ravlin’s images at Bill Ravlin Photography.

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