An art blog less about process and theory, and more of a portfolio for me to dump my nonsense. Updates M, W, F, or whenever I feel like it.

Thursday, January 16, 2014

Genitalia

Specifically ant genitalia. . .
Even more specifically, a 130x scale replica of half of a male Formica obscuripes genital capsule.










  
^ Ectal view of the three main components.                                    Ectal view of the penisvalva and volsellus.  ^












^ Mesal view of the three main components.                         Mesal view of the three main components (exploded).  ^
Click to enlarge! (insert male-enhancement joke here)

These models were sculpted from my go-to medium (you guessed it) super sculpey, and gifted to my lab's former technician, Brendon Boudinot, before he moved back to California. Brendon is one of the world's experts on male ants and I could think of no better way to send him off than with a giant copy of what he frequently talked about with strangers: ant junk. The parts of the male genital capsule have robust setae (represented by copper wire), and though they are typically connected with muscle and thinned cuticle, here they are entirely disassemblable.

Just to make sure you don't think I crudely threw together some ridiculously shaped blobs and tried to pass them off as representations of a biological wonder, I've included some diagrams of Formica obscuripes genitalia from Brendon's recent functional morphology paper:

        Boudinot, B. E. (2013). The male genitalia of ants: musculature, homology, and functional
                   morphology (Hymenoptera, Aculeata, Formicidae). Journal of Hymenoptera
                   Research, 30, 29-49.