Small Black Digging Wasp
Thread-waisted Crabronid Wasp
S1, Female, profile
Animals
Plants
Info
| Small Black Digging Wasp | | Thread-waisted Crabronid Wasp S1, Female, profile | | ||
Animals Plants Info |
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||||||||||
| Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | |||||||||||||
| Family: | Square-headed Wasp (Wasp:Crabronidae) iNaturalist Observation | |||||||||||||
| Species: | Thread-waisted Crabronid Wasp (Rhopalum sp)| This Photo: | 🔍S1, Female, dorsal & Wing Venation🔎 | Thank you Kerri-Lee Harris for identifying and Dr Ben Parslow & Milo van Loon for helping with the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~7mm long. We thought this was Podagritus sp. When we asked Kerri-Lee why she thought this was a female she said "Just 10 segments in the flagellum (cf 11 in males); and just 6 visible segments in the abdomen (cf 7 in males). That rule works for most (but not all) crabronids." Kerri-Lee revisted this observation some time later and moved it from Podagritus to the current species. She has a paper to distinguish these two very similar genera, saying "Note, in particular here: 1. Head shape (including relatively short distance bwn posterior ocelli and eyes) (Photo #1) 2. Pronotal collar much lower than mesoscutum (which is strongly arched/rounded anteriorly) (Photo #2) 3. Forewing venation, re the site at which the recurrent vein meets the submarginal cell. The shape of the prepectus originally led me to Podagritus (it appears angular in Photo #7), but I've since discovered that the appearance can be deceiving in images, depending upon the angle of the lighting. Compare with Photo #8 where it looks decidedly rounded." (these photo numbers relate to our iNat post) Kerri-Lee later said "This is a very difficult one to call with any real confidence. The two genera are very, very alike."
| |||||||||||