This handsome large, red ant is native to Central America but has been, like so many other species, introduced to Florida and is slowly making its way into Texas. There are a lot of pages purporting to be about the compact carpenter ant, Campnotus planatus, but despite this it still suffers from Wikipedia Stub Syndrome,…
Tag: hymenoptera
Buren’s Pyramid Ant
Another lovely insect whose descriptions online are just stubs of articles. The “remarks” on the Dorymyrmex bureni page on bugguide mention that this ant is not considered a nuisance species as it happens not to shoot formic acid (as do some formicine ants). What a ringing recommendation. They’re brown, they like sandy areas, and they…
Lelaps sp. (A Parasitic Wasp)
An unforeseen side-effect of picking up macro photography has been that, every time I turn around, I discover an entirely new universe. Before I started trying to identify my tiny photo subjects, I had absolutely no idea how many of the miscellaneous little black “flies” zooming around were actually tiny, parasitic wasps. And I do…
Mexican Paper Wasp
Meet Mischocyttarus mexicanus, the Mexican paper wasp. This eusocial species has actually been extensively studied, because individual wasps employ different reproductive strategies over their lifetime, including nesting individually and as a colony, brood parasitism (with unrelated conspecifics) and usurpation. This “reproductive generalization” is unusual behavior. M. mexicanus can be found all over the southern United…
Brown-Winged Striped Sweat Bee
The brown-winged striped sweat bee (Agapostemon splendens) is another victim of Extremely Obvious Naming; it’s unfortunate that this gorgeous, metallic green bee has such a boring name. This is actually a male A. splendens; the abdomens of females are metallic green, and their tibia are furry. Sweat bees (family Halictidae) come in a huge variety…
Parasitic Wasp and Gall
This is an interesting setup — this wasp is actually a parasite of a parasite. She’s walking over this tree gall, seeing if she can lay her eggs in any of the parasitic insects living inside the gall! Galls (rounded protrusions of trunk or stem) form on plants when (usually, larval) insects burrow inside. The…
Acrobat Ant
I love encountering entirely new species! I had never heard of an acrobat ant before I got a photo of this little (3mm!) lady. Acrobat ants get their name from their ability to raise their abdomen over their thorax and head when disturbed (you can kind of see this one lifting her butt at me…
Southern Yellowjacket
This grumpy, chilly southern yellowjacket (Vespula squamosa) would not have let me get this photo if it hadn’t been 55 degrees F outside. She was sunning herself and did not appreciate being photographed; you can see her head turned toward me, and one foreleg half-raised in a very rude gesture. These social wasps are found…
Thread-Waisted Wasp
Originally I thought this was some sort of fly. Then I thought it was a wasp. Then I thought it was a wasp mimicking a fly. /r/insects didn’t know what it was. Months later, while searching for Polistes wasps on google, I scrolled past a picture of a similar species of sand-digger wasp, and —…
Paper Wasp
Paper wasps (Polistes sp.) are named because of the paper-like nests the queens build. They are members of the family Vespidae. Paper wasps are primitively eusocial, like bees. There are three castes: fertile queens, infertile female workers, and fertile males who do nothing but fertilize the queen. Founding queens sometimes start a nest in a…