Golden Spider Wasp
S1, Female, Face
Two-coloured Orange Spider Wasp
S1, Female, dorsal
Animals
Plants
Info
| Golden Spider Wasp S1, Female, Face | | Two-coloured Orange Spider Wasp S1, Female, dorsal | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||||
| Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | |||||||||||||||
| Family: | Tarantula-hawk Wasp (Wasp: Pompilidae: Pepsini) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||||
| Species: | Golden Spider Wasp (Cryptocheilus australis)| This Photo: | S1, Female, Dirty Colour | Synonym: | Heterodontonyx australis | Thank you Kerri-Lee Harris & Sam Gordon for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~19mm body & head length and ~34mm wingspan. Mainly black wasp with bright orange head, abdomen, antennae, wings & legs. The black thorax seems to be a dirty coloured compared to others in the genus. The abdomen stripe seems to be diagnostic, which is quite thin with these compared with C. bicolor. Note the smaller size of these compared with the C. bicolor we've measured. These also have a black bar across the top of the head between the compound eyes, hiding the Ocelli. The surprising thing with these is that they hunt Huntsman spider, looking much larger than the wasp. The spider is used to feed the wasps offspring. The adult wasps feed on pollen.
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