Another laptop visitor, this time, a parasitoid wasp, perhaps of the kind that parasitises the hundreds of ladybugs out and about at the moment. Likely in the Eucoilinae family.
Update: not a parasitoid wasp but an oak gall wasp, tribe Cynipini. Thanks to Luis Nastasi for the identification at the tribe level.
A gallery of social wasps.
I haven’t posted here for a while so here is an invasive and #AsianHornet (Vespa velutina) that recorded in France this summer. This one was in the Pays de la Loire.
Yellow leg tips, dark head+thorax, thin yellow band on abdomen, yellow/orange 4th segment on abdomen.
"While some buy the nests, others harvest them straight from the source: outside and often very high in tree canopies. There’s only a short window of time to retrieve the nests responsibly. One must wait long enough after the first few frosts to ensure that a nest is empty, but act soon enough so that its paper-thin construction is not damaged by wind, rain or hungry birds."
Quite pleased with this shot of an Urosigalphus braconid wasp I got in central Austin today. I suspect the wasps are emerging from live oak acorns, having parasitized the grubs acorn weevils.
Not many live photos exist of this genus, it seems.
Malcolm Storey created and maintains https://www.bioimages.org.uk , a huge catalogue of high-resolution images of most animals that can be found in the British Isles, except for birds and other vertebrates.
Offers one of the most comprehensive catalogue of #Ichneumonidae images with special emphasis on macro photography to illustrate species-diagnostic features.
Malcolm has been identifying thousands of parasitoid wasps at #iNaturalist – that's how I found out. Thanks so much for all your work.
https://www.inaturalist.org/people/3839145
A nest of Syneoca cyanea warrior wasps in Paraná, Brazil. Two things I love. Wasps. And Brazil.
Finally, on the trail, a fearsome, very large wasp, a Delta unguiculatum, busy stabbing and carrying a pillbug – presumably to stash away as food for its young.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/309811924
And a rare one: a velvet ant, male, genus Dasylabris, also grooming – thankfully, otherwise, I'd never be able to snap photos of these most gorgeous wasps.
Males are harmless; their mission in life is to find a female, which are wingless, pick it up and mate in a nuptial flight, and gently carry it to an auspicious location where it will find many a prey to catch and stash away, paralized, to feed their young in an underground burrow.
https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/309786828
Albert Cardona
Alex Wild
Steve
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