Many research programs in biology neglect natural history. While investigating sophisticated hypotheses and theories, even very basic information about study organisms remains unknown. This is why a recent paper by Dr. Walter Tschinkel and Daniel Domínguez is so exciting. These researchers, as reported in PLOS ONE last week, photographed and identified most of the seeds collected by the seed-harvesting ant species Pogonomyrmex badius. Their results are a work of art. Below are a few of the beautiful images from their paper (click one to scroll through the slideshow). These represent merely a small subset of the entire diversity shown in the study, so you should definitely check out the rest.

Figure 1 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 4 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 7 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 15 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 28 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 36 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)

Figure 40 in Tschinkel and Dominguez (2017)