Yellow-antennae Weevil Wasp Female, Waist | Orange Weevil Wasp Female, profile | |||||
Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | ||||
Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | ||||
Family: | Square-headed Wasp (Wasp: Crabronidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
Species: | Orange Weevil Wasp (Cerceris sp ES03) | ||||
This Photo: | 🔍Female, dorsal🔎 | ||||
Thank you Milo van Loon & Brian Dagley for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~13mm long. Kerri-Lee said "I think this might be a particularly dark form of C. australis. She is very similar to your other, typically-coloured female sighting, and the clypeus seems to match Evans' description for that species. Evans (1981) makes the following remarks regarding colour variation in C. australis: "Females show little variation in form of the clypeus or sculpture of T2. They do show much variation in the amount of yellow on the head, thorax, and propodeum, some having spots on the sides of the propodeal slope; frequently the petiole is partly yellow". (p. 349) In the introduction to his review of the genus, Evans also notes: ".. yellow, orange, and rufous are used somewhat loosely, since in fact not all specimens are of precisely the same hue." Indeed, he describes the type specimen as having orange-yellow markings." (p. 303) | |||||
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