Fun with antlions: Did you know their pupae can bite?

Images taken in a controlled environment or with a posed subject. All subject types.

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rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

This is closer, but not quite there yet. The animation does not play in my browser.

I downloaded the file and pulled it into Photoshop, and I see there that the animation is set to play Once instead of Forever.

Please check the play settings of your resized file. I'm guessing they got changed when you downsized and re-saved the file.

--Rik

Chris S.
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Post by Chris S. »

Deanimator wrote: Where in Ohio are you?
I've never seen antlions in the Cleveland area.
Where would you look?
By now, Lou and Mark have already provided very good information, with which I agree.

I live about an hour south of you in the Hartville area. There are definitely ant lions in NE Ohio.

As a boy, I first encountered them outside a relative's house in northern Stark County. The house was on a hill and the soil was well-drained and sandy. Ant lions lived in high density along the south side of the house, under the protection of the overhanging roof. Neighborhood boys would toss ants into the lions' small pits and watch the lions leap out to devour them.

NE Ohio has diverse soil types, many of them clay-predominant. I don't recall seeing ant lions in the heavy clays--only dry, sandy soils.

In the field, one never sees the ant lions at first--it's the cone-shaped depressions in the sand that catch the eye. The lions are lurking just under the sand at the bottom middle. To see the ant lion, it either has to come out after an ant, or some inquisitive human must dig up a small handful of sand.

The Cleveland Metroparks and Cleveland Museum of Natural History have naturalists and biologists who could likely direct you to local spots. In my experience, these folks are approachable and of great help. (As an aside, you might consider volunteering for a "bio-blitz" next summer. The folks you meet can show you a lot of fascinating natural subjects for communicating with the camera.)

--Chris S.

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

The original gif was set to loop forever.
But what I did here was to remake the gif from scratch (in Gimp, as I do not have PS). I resized each jpg to 650px at the widest, and built the gif again. Set to loop forever. The default frame rate is 100 milliseconds. I have always set it to 200 ms since there are only two frames. Maybe that is an issue for some reason. Anyway, the file size for this gif was then 338 kb. It plays for me and has the gif extension. But when I attempted to upload it here as I had done before the upload window said file size exceeded the limit (??!!).
So I laundered the gif through Preview, which is the image viewer program for the Mac computer. Set the picture sizes as above. The file size now says 299kb. Uploaded to here and it was accepted for upload. In the upload window I saw the animation play once, then stop. But here goes...

Image
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

I think it is reasonable to quit. rjlittlefield, You are most welcome to post your resized gif into here if you like. But regardless, thank you for your help! It is very much appreciated.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Sigh... I hate it when things work fine for me and not for other people.

I had my browser save your last image to file. Then I pulled it into GIMP 2.8, did a File > Export to GIF, previewed the animation, did a File > Export to gif, checked the box "As animation", made sure that "Loop forever" was checked, and clicked Export. Then I uploaded the file using the forum's "Upload picture" dialog as usual.

Here is the result:

Image

--Rik

Lou Jost
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Post by Lou Jost »

Thanks for that, Mark and Rik,it is amazing!

BugEZ
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Post by BugEZ »

Rik and Marc,

Thanks for soldiering on and making the animation go. Very cool!

Regarding where ant lions can be found...

In Northern Illinois I find them under the eves of my home in a neglected flower garden (seldom watered). The dry sandy soil allows the pit traps to function. When I put in an automated sprinkler the ant lions disappeared, but when I changed the plants and stopped needing to water very often the ant lions returned.

Excellent series!

Keith

MarkSturtevant
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Post by MarkSturtevant »

Thank you for getting that to work! I did exactly like you described, and it does not work here for for me for reasons unknown.
Mark Sturtevant
Dept. of Still Waters

ChrisR
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Post by ChrisR »

Image

I used Photoshop, only, & slowed it a bit. Nothing special.
Chris R

rjlittlefield
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Post by rjlittlefield »

Yeah, I prefer it slower also. The one I posted was at 200 ms/frame only because that's the way Mark had it set. I wanted to make the fewest possible changes to what he had, and still using GIMP, in hopes of getting a workflow that he could reproduce. It would be really nice to know why that didn't work.

--Rik

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