Panda Sand Wasp
S2, Male, Face
Panda Sand Wasp
S1, Male, Wing Venation
| Panda Sand Wasp S2, Male, Face | | Panda Sand Wasp S1, Male, Wing Venation | | ||
 | Class: | Animals (Animalia) - Jointed Legs (Arthropoda) - Insects (Insecta) | |||
| Order: | Ant Bee Wasps (Hymenoptera) | ||||
| Family: | Digging Wasp (Wasp: Crabronidae) iNaturalist Observation | ||||
| Species: | Panda Sand Wasp (Bembix vespiformis) | ||||
| This Photo: | 🔍S1, Male, Mandibles🔎 | ||||
Thank you Brian Dagley for confirming the id of this species for us General Species Information: Found on Ellura (in the Murray Mallee, SA) and elsewhere ~19mm long, male. We noted our 2nd specimen went from ~18mm to ~21mm as it warmed up out of the fridge. You'll also notice the extra black ventral bars that have appeared as it extended. We didn't notice the bars/hooks on the antennae with our 1st specimen either. Typically these are seen with an orange/yellow posterior making them easy to id. Here is a redescription of them from 1915, indicating they can have a black posterior: "This species is easily distinguished by the broad band on the basal dorsal segment, sometimes the second and third dorsal segments also have narrow bauds, often interrupted, the fourth always without a band; scutellum with a spot on each side, mesonotum immaculate. The male structural characters are the very broad basal joint of the fore tarsus, which has seven spines on the outer margin and is edged with black near the apex ; the seventh joint of the flageilum strongly excised beneath, with a strong spine at the base, eighth joint with a minute spine at the base; second ventral segment with a strong tubercle, sixth and seventh unarmed; apical spine of the eighth stout, truncate or feebly bilobed at the apex. West Australian males have the seventh dorsal segment mostly, the sixth and the apex of the fifth entirely, brownish yellow; in Adelaide and Queensland specimens the seventh and fifth are black, with two yellow spots on the seventh in one Queensland specimen, the sixth sometimes with a yellow apical band, sometimes without. It appears to me that the stipes of the genitalia in the Adelaide form are distinctly broader than in the West Australian specimens and also somewhat different in sculpture. In Queensland specimens the wings are iufuscate on the discoidal area." | |||||
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