Images

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

Two VERY SMALL spiders. Sadly I know little about spiders so can't tell you the species / group other a number that it is not. This Spider was only about 4mm. Captured outside of my lab in Beltsville, MD. Once I started looking I realized...there are billions of such spiders (tiny ones that is) in an average field.

Spider, Prince George's County, Experimental shot in a cuvette in hand sanitizer, this is the underside of the previous specimen...but Ben was able to eliminate more bubbles by carefully pouring the handsanitizer, will be working on lighting too

Beautiful, but scary. This is the Spotted Lanternfly (Lycorma delicatula). An impressive 2 inch exotic Fulgorid type thing from China and Southeast asia, it is a bark sucker and can do tremendous damage to smooth barked woody plants.

a new species record for Maryland collected by Richard Orr in the Catoctin Mountains. We will be looking into it over the next few weeks.

Experiment: This specimen has previously been photographed and uploaded to our account. The difference is that I have cleaned the specimen by rehydrating it overnight floating on foam in a tupper ware container of water and then vigorously washing it in hot soapy water by dunking the specimen on the pin into another plastic container and shaking.

Tetragona species, Biting Stingless Bee, specimen collected by German Perilla in PeruStingless bees are just that, they cannot sting, their sting mechanism was reduced to non-functionality many tens of millions of years ago.

Tetragona species, Biting Stingless Bee, specimen collected by German Perilla in PeruStingless bees are just that, they cannot sting, their sting mechanism was reduced to non-functionality many tens of millions of years ago.

Another beautiful Stinkbug from South America...this time, Argentina. Insect taken from the Natural History collection of the Smithsonian. 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.

Another set of pictures of a different specimen of Svastra duplocincta. Below is a repeat of the previous verbage for the species.While most people would not necessarily think about this very much (beer, for example, is thought about a lot more), many bees are specialists on Cacti.

Another set of pictures of a different specimen of Svastra duplocincta. Below is a repeat of the previous verbage for the species.While most people would not necessarily think about this very much (beer, for example, is thought about a lot more), many bees are specialists on Cacti.

Who doesn't like an orchid? This is green-fringed orchid, found at the edge of the USGS Bee Lab's grounds near some woods. Nice to see this uncommon species. Planathera lacera. Photo and specimen collected by Helen Lowe Metzman.

Polistes dominulus from the Dominican Republic