extremely tiny ceratopogonidae fly larva looks really cool when she moves

Little native bee anthro sketch! I'm trying to find a medium between accuracy and stylization. I want to get to the point where people can identify my characters down to species just from the drawing. If you can successfully tell what this is, extra brownie points to you! (I'll reveal the species in a couple of days anyway.) Hint: assume this bee lives natively in the northeastern US.

Great guesses! The bee is not a megachilid, but I can see where people got that (I definitely went overboard with the hairs on the underside of the abdomen, makes them look like scopa)

Good point! I've lined and colored the bee here so that it's easier to ID. Tomorrow I'll reveal the beecret (bee secret), but until then, here's a great resource for identifying US bees to species!

Alright, it's time! The species is...

Hey, you guys figured it out! She is indeed Halictus ligatus. For those interested in how to tell, here are some diagrams and tips:

The best way to figure out a species is to go through a dichotomous or multivariable key, but those are often hard to follow if you don't know the terminology. Halictus ligatus is in the family Halictidae, which is most readily determined from other bees by the super curved basal vein on their wings (see it next to the curved red arrow on the image). In comparison to Megachilidae, they have very few hairs on the underside of their abdomen. The numbers in the image correspond to the number of submarginal cells, which is always 2 in Megachilidae and often (not always) 3 in Halictidae.

As for getting to Halictus, there are only so many halictid genera in the northeast US, most of which are colored bright racecar green. The two most common halictid genera that have totally non-metallic representatives are Halictus and Lasioglossum. The mega-diverse Lasioglossum is usually totally without stripes of short hairs called fimbria, but some larger specimens have that sort of banding. When they do, you can tell the two genus apart by where those bands of fimbria arise: Halictus has hairs at the very end of the segment (apical), while Lasioglossum has them jutting from the very beginning of the segment (basal).

The last part, identifying to species, is actually fairly easy. Halictus ligatus has a really prominent knob at the bottom of their cheek, and they're the only Northeastern US bee to have that property. More southern states also have the practically identical H. poeyi. Scientists haven't figured out how to tell them apart without DNA analysis, so a limited range hint was the only way I could represent that difference. Putting it all together:

small-headed fly/BIG-HEADED FLY

Common names are a bit hit or miss, but these two? 🤌🤌

These precious large-headed children are jewel beetle larvae in the family Buprestidae! Couldn’t say which species at this stage, though.

Lytta sublaevis (Meloidae)

Carrizo Plain National Monument, 2019

just for fun, a compilation of every wasp species I've seen drink from the pond so far.

Spider Wasp, genus Fabriogenia.

Potter Wasp, subfamily Eumeninae.

Potter Wasp, genus Paralastor.

Square-headed Wasp, subfamily Crabroninae.

Vase-cell Mud-dauber Wasp, Sceliphron formosum.

Square-headed Wasp, genus Pison.

Australian Paper Wasp, Polistes humilis.

unequivocally the best thing about having a garden is waking up to a couple good ass squash bees snoozing in a zucchini blossom.

Peponapis pruinosa

having fun at my new job

try it i fucking dare you

she be like “aw tysm” and I be like “who told you? anyway, this is why the order hymenoptera (bees/wasps/ants) likely has more species compared to the order coleoptera (beetles) despite decades of us thinking beetles had the most for the past decades if not hundreds of years…”

Tags from @fagromyzidae I thought were notable! Hope you don't mind the screenshot-

It's truly fascinating, especially with the order experiencing heavy restructuring recently. As some of you may know from my review, I read Wasps Of The World recently, and it's extremely interesting how many sections within that book describe particular families as having been elevated in rank due to a recent genetic analysis of Chalcidoidea, to the point of having to put together a list of 26 newly classified families that were classified during the writing of the book.

We're seeing species, genera, subfamilies, and families springing up all over the place and I do not think we're going to be done classifying wasps any time soon

I don't mind the screenshot at all, it gives me more chance to ramble about this!

Absolutely true, since getting into hymenoptera taxonomy I've seen firsthand how much it never ends-- definitely there is much more to describe than could be be done in a lifetime. It's beautiful and daunting and exciting to me.

My current work (which is kind of an accidental "basically a master's thesis but without getting a master's degree") involves describing a handful of new species in the chalcid genus *Eurytoma* (family Eurytomidae), but that genus is massive and definitely in need of revision. Trouble is that they're also very difficult, so many of them look near-identical, even to me, and I've been staring at them under microscopes for the better part of a year at this point. Still, someone will have to do it at some point......there's a possibility that someone could end up being future me, but who knows, haha.

Meanwhile, I've also been involved in a variety of side projects with the grad student I work under, who mostly does gall wasp stuff. Front that I can say that the superfamily Cynipoidea is due to get exploded and restructured one of these days-- another Chalcidoidea situation where you're going to end up with a bunch of new families. Cynipidae and Figitidae definitely arent monophyletic ❤️. But that's a huge undertaking, and only in the earlier stages at this point, so it's more of a "that'll happen at some point years down the line" rather than a "there's actively a manuscript being written for this"

but on a smaller scale there's a LOT of work to be done in cynipoidea. especially outside of cynipini (the oak gall wasps), there's literally like....4 or 5 people working on non-cynipini total and 2 of them are in the lab I work with. I could be a 3rd person if you count my involvement here.

And at this point it's a really common experience in this lab to have moments of "oh there are so many more species here than people thought", it's practically par for the course! The inquiline gall wasp genus I mentioned in the tags before, Ceroptres? Has like less than 20 described species in the US rn. I've been involved in the paper where another 22 of them are being described, and it's only scratching the surface because they're a lot more specialized than we thought. If someone went through unsorted material from that genus at one of the major museum collections they'd easily find, what, hundreds of new species?

And this isn't that unusual! The recurring theme is that as soon as you start to look closer, especially with host specialization in mind, you realize "dear god there are hundreds of thousands of undescribed species"

it's beautiful

Robber flies in the genus Maira

Found in Southeast Asia and down into Australia and the Pacific Islands

Photo 1 by ahmuvan, 2 by budak, 3 by gancw1, 4 by orthoptera-jp, 5 by ytw, and 6 by themufflab

She's done! Dasymutilla flammifera.

Not A Cat

(Cuterebra buccata, a gorgeous botfly which apparently parasitizes bunnies? So large I thought she was a cicada when I first sighted her!)

One can see how I initially took her for a cicada:

As always, if you're thinking about dropping a comment here which is hating on bugs, move along or get blocked.

the feeling of being pestered by flies is universal for land-living animals. this Tenodera sinensis was finishing up her honeybee meal, whose strong flowery aroma brought over a milichiid fly, a kleptoparasite that steal sips of prey that other insects have caught. this behavior has earned them the common name of “freeloader flies.”

interestingly, honeybee scents seem to be strongly attractive to local milichiids despite Apis not being native to the area. watching a spider or mantis devour its honeybee prey is a good way to catch a glimpse of these otherwise elusive flies!

Polistes dominula with a sugary snack! She's very yellow, never seen one with a solid yellow clypeus.

haven't seen a Tangleveined fly in so long! I've been wanting to see one again and finally get some proper pretty macros of it, they're so fluffy and beautiful <3

Unknown Tangleveined Fly (family Nemestrinidae, subfamily Atriadopinae).