As I’ve mentioned before, for the last few months I’ve been feverishly moving objects for a gallery lighting project.
That’s pretty much done now (and looking great) so now I’m feverishly moving the Dead Zoo’s collection of over a million insects out to a new home in the National Museum of Ireland’s Collections Resource Centre.
So this week I have an insect for you to identity, which should provide a bit of a colourful change from the usual vertebrate bones:
For some of you this may be way too easy, for others, way too hard. It help to know that this was collected in India and it’s around 25-30mm long.
I hope you have fun identifying it!
Zygoma 
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsCuckoo Wasp?
I believe that there are some flies that are camouflaged to look like wasps, but a close look suggests that this thingy has a full complement of four wings, instead of the two plus two halteres (?) that characterises the flies (including the banes of my existence, the bloody mosquitoes!), and since it clearly isn’t a bee, and even reproductive ants probably have no use for such colouring or such large compound eyes, I will call it a Greenbottle Wasp*, which will have to do until an actual identification comes along.
*Does Indian Rainbow Wasp sound better?
So, after a little research (yes we don’t just make up everything off the tops of our heads you know), I am torn between the golden-vessel and the cockroach scourge. Leaning towards the former, though…
Righty ho, I give up. After the tea and cakes and ices, I must force my decision to its… with an Indian specific?
It’s so beautiful – but reading about it was like reading a horror story!
I don’t see the red on the legs, so I’m wondering if Palfreyman isn’t correct in suggesting it’s in disguise…
Yep, that red thigh thing… hence my suggestion that golden-vessel might be the more appropriate group.
But the fit isn’t perfect either way…
And oh yes, Paolo, those display cases look magnificent!
Thanks Ravi!
Bride and groom, they take to flight
To the theater?
Opera, Verdi
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsI think its Chlorion (Sphecidae, Hymenoptera).
https://polldaddy.com/js/rating/rating.jsCould this be perhaps be a ‘lobed’ wasp that has a taste for crickets?
That’s Chlorion lobatum, a digger wasp quite common everywhere in SE Asia.