Buprestid Bonanza

I visited the Cerceris fumipennis nesting site at the Cowling Arboretum from noon to 1pm. Clear, sunny, hot and humid---ideal wasp watching conditions (ideal for the wasps not the watcher!). I counted twenty two nests. I found three abandoned beetles, beetles dropped and left outside the nests by the wasps. In addition to the abandoned beetles, I was able to collect four beetles by gently tapping the returning wasps with my hand. Seven beetles total, a Buprestid bonanza compared to the single beetle collected during my previous visit.

Two of the beetles, one abandoned (Buprestis sp.) and one captured (Dicerca sp.), were very large. If I hadn't seen the wasp flying with the one beetle, I wouldn't have believed it possible. This feat raises further question of how the wasps capture these giant, well-armored beetles to begin with.

A lot of other wasp and bee activity occurred all around me, which I had to neglect while keeping my vigil for returning Cerceris wasps. I did manage to photograph an incoming Ant Queen Kidnapping Wasp, though I wasn't quick enough to get a photo of the kidnapped ant queen that the wasp left momentarily at the entrance of her nest. By the time I looked at it and recognized what I was seeing, the wasp grabbed it and whisked it into her burrow, a large reddish ant with wings, maybe Lassius sp.?

Posted on 05 de julho de 2017, 04:26 AM by scottking