Dispatches From The Field

25 July, 2003 -- Ted Gilliland

The identificction of insects is as expected, extremely challenging. We are identifying each insect down to the family level (the distintion less specific than Genus, but more focused than Order) and even that is extremely difficult. The identifiction requires you to look for things like dorso-ventrally compressed thoracic regions coupled with the presence of spines of alternating length on the posterior ventral edge of the mid femora. And that’s an easy identification. It can be a bit challenging at times, but I always am as excited to keep working when it’s time to go to bed as I am when I wake up in the morning to start a new.

Insects never cease to amaze me either. One of my speciemens is in the family Pompilidae (the Spider Wasps). In this family, The female seeks out a large spider, captures it, paralyzes it, carries the spider away, digs a cavern underground, brings the spider underground, lays here egg on the spider, and then burries the both of them. The egg later hatches and larval spider wasp proceeds to use the spider as its first food source. Even more fascinating, a different species of Spider Wasp within the same family relized that it didn’t need to go through all this trouble, all it had to do was steal the spider from the other spider wasp while it digs the hole. Is there any wonder why I study insects? They’re amazing. They live wondrously intricate live that are far from proportional to their size.

-Ted Gilliland