This post didn't incorporate a blog at all . But instead I put all information in the descriptions of the photos. I wanted to explore the variety of form within ants and insects. I followed a similar format as my first project. I particularly enjoyed the aspect of comparing the ants form to their social structure (castes), and to their relationships with other organisms (aphid farms).

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A bit of elaboration not included in the descriptions of the photos:

Ants show lots of anatomical variety depending on  species or genus, and this occurs for many reasons. It maninly has to do with their life style, for example a pale yellow Lasius ant has wider jaws meant for carrying a root aphid than say a worker of Myrmica which spends most of its life crawling around pine needles under a tree searching for small insects to grasp and sting. The Lasius is also stouter than the Myrmica, this helps them move around the tunnels and take up less space, the long length of myrmica help them conserve the amount of workers required to bring back food to the nest. Since lasius gets sugar from the aphids, it doesn't have to worry about climbing trees, finding sap, or eating sugar rich insects. In the same way, a pine weevil doesn't need to have the same long and flexible legs as an ant, becauase it's stouter grippy legs help it avoid predators by playing dead.