4 ms·

I coincidentally discovered a similar situation yesterday, when attempting to identify a dazed hornet. Comparing it to specimen photos of presumably dead hornet

by marvin 5y ago

I coincidentally discovered a similar situation yesterday, when attempting to identify a dazed hornet. Comparing it to specimen photos of presumably dead hornets, it was very hard to match them, as they had their wings and body arranged in a different way.

throwanem 5y ago
Don't try to use the wings for identification beyond color and opacity; the way they're typically depicted in illustration and mounted specimens is a way in which the living animal only holds them while flying, when you can't see them clearly anyway. They're mounted that way because the venation can be diagnostic, but you won't be close enough for long enough, and a live wasp won't hold still enough - even I never get anything useful there, and I shoot wild wasps in 1:1 macro every chance I get. The only even marginally plausible bare-eye feature of the wing, beyond aforementioned color and infuscation, is the presence or absence of pterostigmata, and that alone isn't terribly useful. In general, for bare-eye identification you want to look at size, general conformation (eg Vespinae have a generally more robust build and a markedly blunt postpropodeal gaster vs Polistinae and solitaries, while sawflies don't have a "wasp waist" abdominal petiole at all), body and leg markings, and in some cases proportions of facial features, although that's often more useful in identifying a family or a genus than a species. With a living, active animal, many features can be hard to spot, so knowledge of locally common species is also useful in guiding identification, as is behavior - the four-toothed mason wasps that build nest cells in my porch stair rails look at a glance a lot like bald-faced yellowjackets, but behave totally differently, which can be enough to distinguish even without a chance at a close look. If you have photos or even just an accurate description and still want a specific (from photos) or at least familial ID, I might be able to give you one from them; I'm only an interested amateur and not as familiar with true hornets since there are few to be found in the Nearctic, but I've been an interested amateur for long enough to be both well supplied with references and reasonably practiced at identification. Feel free to email me at any of the addresses in my profile, or just reply here, and I'll be happy to take a look. Failing that, if you do have photos, BugGuide and iNaturalist are good options for identification, although my experience with the latter suggests difficult IDs aren't likely to find much traction there - that might, as some have argued, be an effect of the platform's gamification, but I think it may be more just that hymenopterologists are likely no more common there than elsewhere.

by marvin 5y ago

throwanem 5y ago

Don't try to use the wings for identification beyond color and opacity; the way they're typically depicted in illustration and mounted specimens is a way in which the living animal only holds them while flying, when you can't see them clearly anyway. They're mounted that way because the venation can be diagnostic, but you won't be close enough for long enough, and a live wasp won't hold still enough - even I never get anything useful there, and I shoot wild wasps in 1:1 macro every chance I get. The only even marginally plausible bare-eye feature of the wing, beyond aforementioned color and infuscation, is the presence or absence of pterostigmata, and that alone isn't terribly useful. In general, for bare-eye identification you want to look at size, general conformation (eg Vespinae have a generally more robust build and a markedly blunt postpropodeal gaster vs Polistinae and solitaries, while sawflies don't have a "wasp waist" abdominal petiole at all), body and leg markings, and in some cases proportions of facial features, although that's often more useful in identifying a family or a genus than a species. With a living, active animal, many features can be hard to spot, so knowledge of locally common species is also useful in guiding identification, as is behavior - the four-toothed mason wasps that build nest cells in my porch stair rails look at a glance a lot like bald-faced yellowjackets, but behave totally differently, which can be enough to distinguish even without a chance at a close look. If you have photos or even just an accurate description and still want a specific (from photos) or at least familial ID, I might be able to give you one from them; I'm only an interested amateur and not as familiar with true hornets since there are few to be found in the Nearctic, but I've been an interested amateur for long enough to be both well supplied with references and reasonably practiced at identification. Feel free to email me at any of the addresses in my profile, or just reply here, and I'll be happy to take a look. Failing that, if you do have photos, BugGuide and iNaturalist are good options for identification, although my experience with the latter suggests difficult IDs aren't likely to find much traction there - that might, as some have argued, be an effect of the platform's gamification, but I think it may be more just that hymenopterologists are likely no more common there than elsewhere.