Images

Spodoptera eridania - Southern armyworm. A pest in southern parts of the U.S. mostly Florida. Defoliator of tomatoes and other crops. Not a candidate for the insect Miss Universe contest...or is is? I think close up there is a lot of beauty in this series of life history shots, but that is my personal opinion.

Spodoptera eridania - Southern armyworm. A pest in southern parts of the U.S. mostly Florida. Defoliator of tomatoes and other crops. Not a candidate for the insect Miss Universe contest...or is is? I think close up there is a lot of beauty in this series of life history shots, but that is my personal opinion.

Quercus falcata, picked up from the sidewalk outside my lab, a lovely fresh acorn, drill in to see all the lovely hairs that pubesce across the surface.

This is an odd Genus of bee from Kruger National Park where I traveled with Jonathan Mawdsley to South Africa to collect bees in the park. While a poor shot in terms of the antennae...if you look closely one of the antennae is broadened like the bowl of a spoon (thus the genus name Spatunomia) while the other is simply broken off.

Pseudomyrmex gracilis from Biscayne National Park, Florida. Thanks to Doug Yanega for the Genus name and James Trager for the species name of this introduced species

The lovely web of branches in the pollen collecting hairs of this little bee Pseudopanurgus albitarsis is lovely. A more prairie like species, but here it is in the Shenadoah Valley...always more prairie like than the surrounding mountain landscapes. Collected by Morgan Rondinelli. Photographed by Brooke Alexander.

May or may not be a parasitic wasp, could be an aculeate, Dominican Republic, photographed floating in hand sanitizer in a quartz cuvette. Roger Burks via Doug Yanega identified this as Psilochalcis

Pterocheilus quinquefasciatus. - Hunter of caterpillars...in this case, hunter of caterpillars in South Dakota Badlands. This wasp has long stiff hairs on the palps of its tongue and it uses them like a basket...carrying dirt of its nest and away from the nest entrance so it is harder for parasitoids to track its babies locations.

Pterostichus permundus - A new Carabid Beetle for the State of Maryland. Captured at Cove Point at the tip of Calvert County Maryland by Brent Steury as part of his survey of the beetles of the site. For those of you who care, the leg shot is included showing the 4 tiny setae that separate this species from its sister taxa.

Pterostichus permundus - A new Carabid Beetle for the State of Maryland. Captured at Cove Point at the tip of Calvert County Maryland by Brent Steury as part of his survey of the beetles of the site. For those of you who care, the leg shot is included showing the 4 tiny setae that separate this species from its sister taxa.

I have nicknamed this bee (Ptilothrix bombiformis) the refuge bee because it is found so often on National Wildlife Refuges. Why? Well this species is a hibiscus specialist and refuges are full of impoundments and those impoundments often have fresh water hibiscus plants in them.

Rediviva species, Black Daddy Longlegs Oil Bee, collected in South Africa We showed the male already...here is the female.What fantastically cool bees! These bees have extremely long front legs that they use to collect oil from plants, using the oil instead of nectar as food for the larvae. At the end of their legs are sponge-like patches of hairs.

Rhinocyllus conicus, the Eurasian flower head weevil, infests flower heads of Pitcher's thistle at the Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore. Its presence was first discovered in 2012. The weevil is a biocontrol agent for musk thistle, Carduus nutans. Picture by Wayne Boo.

Mile-a-minute weevil, Rhinoncomimus latipes, this weevil has been brought into North America to contol Polygonum perfoliatum, the mile-a-minute weed. Bob Trumble from Maryland's Department of Agriculture dropped off a few of these minute (about 1.5mm) babies and we photographed them using out 10x lens set up.

Another Heather Campbell collected bee from the Sandhills, this one a nest parasite, likely on something in the genus Lasioglossum, a very small bee...Check out the WIPs in the wing (Wing Interference Patterns) quite lovely ....

Headless Bee. This is the tiny Sphecodes antennariae. The smallest, I believe, Sphecodes in the MidAtlantic. The head fell off somewhere between selection for photographing and photographing. One slighly unusual feature of this nest parasite (likely of Lasioglossum) is that it only has 2 rather than 3 submarginal cells...most of the time.

More Sphecodes from the Adirondack Mountains of New York. There are many species of Sphecodes. They look remarkably the same. Females, like this one, inevitably have red butts and the rest about small sculptural differences.

More Sphecodes shots....this one again from our expedition to the Adirondack Mountains. A big species (for a Sphecodes) about 2/3rds the size of a honey bee. Picture by Brooke Alexander.

A species of Sphecodes captured in agriculture areas of Puerto Rico by Sara Prado. This is either a new island record or a new species as there are no known records for Sphecodes for the island. Notice the lovely WIPs (Wing Interference Patterns)

An unknown species of Sphecodes collected by Tim McMahon in Cecil County. Interesting to ask why Sphecodes often have bring red abdomens when bees theoretically can't see red. Photographed by Brooke Alexander

Sphecodes species, female