Images

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Leptochilus acolhuus, Key Biscayne National Park, Florida, Thanks to Matthias Buck for the determination.

Leucauge venusta, Orchard Orb Weaver, June 2013, Upper Marlboro, MD...eating moths coming to my moth light, highly reflective

Leucauge venusta, Orchard Orb Weaver, June 2013, Upper Marlboro, MD...eating moths coming to my moth light, highly reflective

Spicebush, Lindera benzoin, while early blooming, I see few if any bees on the flowers. This specimen collected and photographed by Helen Lowe Metzman in Howard County, Maryland.

A lovely and quirky looking Liphanthus from Southern Chile. Capture on expedition with Laurence Packer in 2017. Photograph by Anders Croft.

A bee with a fat leg, or at least a wide one. Which is the most distinguising feature of this bee that sadly looks like a whole bunch of other Lasioglossum species. The name? = ...Lasioglossum callidum. Photograph by Brooke Alexander.

The Channel Islands lie off the southern coast of California and contain quite a few endemic plants and animals. Here is a bee species that falls in that category and was collected as part of an effort to survey the climatically vulnerable National Parks. Photography by Ashleigh Jacobs.

Aptly named: Lasioglossum coeruleum. Most of the many confusing members of these small sweat bees glimmer discretely in metallic integument, but our friend here takes it up a notch to and Osmia level.

More L. coreiaceum pictures...these are from a specimen taken as part of global climate change study at Indiana Dunes National Lakeshore.Photograph by Brooke Alexander.

Lasioglossum creberrimum, Big Thicket National Preserve, Texas

A very deserty looking bee from the deserts of Bryce Canyon National Park. Lovely patterns. Photography Information: Canon Mark II 5D, Zerene Stacker, Stackshot Sled, 65mm Canon MP-E 1-5X macro lens, Twin Macro Flash in Styrofoam Cooler, F5.0, ISO 100, Shutter Speed 200.

A male, with great, long antennae, the yellow tarsal segments are distinctive in conjuction with the yellow on the clypeus and the slightly weakened veins in the wings. Collected by Tim McMahon and photoed by Dejen Mengis

A male, with great, long antennae, the yellow tarsal segments are distinctive in conjuction with the yellow on the clypeus and the slightly weakened veins in the wings. Collected by Tim McMahon and photoed by Dejen Mengis. Here I see the hands of a Balinese dancer

A male, with great, long antennae, the yellow tarsal segments are distinctive in conjuction with the yellow on the clypeus and the slightly weakened veins in the wings. Collected by Tim McMahon and photoed by Dejen Mengis

Here is a bee that clearly loves woodlands: Lasioglossum versans. In the obscure morphological vernacular of tiny sweat bees, I identify it by its tiny bulging purple "nose" (supraclypeus) and its complete lack of a hair fan on the base of T1.

Often the most common Lasioglossum at a location in the East. This is Lasioglossum versatum. While common it has the sad trait of sometimes looking like L. trigeminum or L. callidum or L. adimirandum. In isolation they all seem so separable, but since they often occur at the same site and have a tendency to look slightly similar it can be a nightmare.

Lasioglossum versatum. One of the most common little sweat bees in the East. Particularly common in the cooler mid-latitudes. These bees can dominate the captures in surveys of bee species of a region. Something of a mess taxonomically.

Lasioglossum foxii, Alleghany County, Maryland, July 2012

Virginia, Page County

One of the many small difficult to separate by species Lasioglossums. This one was identified by Jason Gibbs and found in Fossil Butte, Wyoming at the National Monument. Photograph by Brooke Alexander.