Jerdon's Jumping Ant

[Vikram Gupchup]

Found this wonderful ant at Amboli . Had a really tough time focusing with a non SLR , But did manage a sharp image after a lot of tries...

The natural history according to the wiki article is quite facinating .

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harpegnathos_saltator

Panasonic fz28 and +2 diopter and built in flash
Shutter priority 1/125

[Bibhav Behera]

The parallel lines in the background look good. It would have been better if you had placed the ant slightly lower in the frame. I checked the EXIF info and found that the camera chose an aperture of f/3.7. A narrower DOF would have been good here by using the Aperture Priority mode. You can post a larger image too.

Thanks for sharing. The link has some interesting info.

[Sabyasachi Patra]

Vikram,
Nice species. The image looks sharp. The background has come out well. I never knew that these fellows can jump upto 2 cm and for a distance of 10 cm. That is several body lengths. I think I have been bitten by these fellows a few years back when I had climbed onto a tree to get a better view of a tigress. Can you please confirm their distribution in India? Thanks for sharing an interesting species.

Cheers,
Sabyasachi

[Mrudul Godbole]

Nicely captured. The details are good. A bigger image 800*533 would have been good to view. Thanks for the link. Look forward to more.

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Sharp shot. Thanks for the info. I have often seen these ants at Matheran. Some Australian species of jumper ant are said to have a bite that requires hospitalisation of the victim.
Thanks for sharing.

[Vikram Gupchup]

Quoting from a mail from insectindia yahoo group .
"there are 2 species known from india. Harpegnathos saltator is found south India and H. venator in north India."

Abhishek , If we can have an image from matheran , we could check which sub species it is .
Bibhav, I generally use Apperture priority , but the shutter speed chosen was not freezing the ant . So consciously swithced over to 1/125 and flash. f3.7 does seem shallow , but with my small sensor size, I get more depth than an SLR sensor at any apperture.

[Abhishek Jamalabad]

Vikram, I haven't photographed the ant in Matheran yet. It looked similar to this one though, and behaviour conforms to the wikipedia info on H. saltator.

[Mohan Raj]

Well taken photograph and I learned good information on this ant.

Vikram, You can also try using macro mode. TFS.

[Jitendra Katre]

interesting info and good image, thanks for sharing..