![]() | Black & Orange Wasp S1, Female, profile | Black & Orange Wasp S1, Female, Wing Venation | ![]() | |||
Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||
Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | ||||
Family: | Square-headed Wasp (Wasp: Crabronidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
Species: | Black & Orange Wasp (Sphodrotes rubra) | ||||
This Photo: | 🔍S1, Female, Iso-view🔎 | ||||
Thank you Kerri-Lee Harris for identifying this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~10mm long. A female as it has 10 flagellomeres. Looks a lot like a bee. 1st indications it was a wasp were the lower antennae joins. Kerri-Lee kindly quoted Bohart & Menke, 1976, for us saying this was a good match: "
Kerri-Lee came back some time later and said "I'm convinced that this is Sphodrotes rubra. The combination of:
This is a tentative id for now. Kerri-Lee added "There is a chance that this is S. rubricata ... The two species are very similar, and although S. rubricata typically has dark markings on the gaster, Lomholdt stresses the wide variation ... including some with an all orange gaster. The other slight concern is the wing colour. The darkening towards the tips fits with S. rubricata, whereas S. rubra is described as hyaline (ie clear)." Kerri-Lee has a number of extensive work sheets to help people id their finds. eg here she has the following as a guide: Work Sheet | |||||
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