Last week was slow, with Eleanor and I only spending one day in the lab. As such, we only sorted through 4 weeks of a kit by K. Capuzzi in Hocking County. I did try to do something a bit different, which is to add a grain of rice for scale in a few images.
Just saying the wasps are small doesn’t put them into context properly. So let’s try a grain of rice for scale! Some of the parasitic wasps as so small that we could easily fit dozens of them on a single grain!
It can be a bit hard to get the camera to focus on both the tiny insects and the grain of rice. But at least this image you can see the tiny hairs on the wings.
Thrips are also really small, but hard to wrap around just how tiny they are. We could fit a couple dozen easily onto this grain of rice. There were a TON of thrips in this particular week.
Check out the Thrips with their fringed wings! This is the closest that the microscope can zoom in. Of course, this is much too close to get any of the grain of rice in.
Rice for scale really throws you for a loop when you realize that a dull green sweat bee (Dialictus sp) is about the same size as a grain of rice.
And I wasn’t kidding that there were a lot of thrips in this kit.
This is one of the bigger flies in the kit. This is also the most zoomed out I can be with the microscope camera, so I was unable to fit the whole fly into the frame at once.
There were also three wood boring beetles in one sample.
We have also almost completely filled one index card box with envelopes containing the skippers and other butterflies.
Also, in the blog last week I shared a very rough sorting of species from a late summer sample. I did a rough sorting of a “typical” spring sample to show the different genera that are much more common in the spring versus late summer.
This spring sample has a lot of Andrena, Osmia, and Nomada. Those three genera are not typically as abundant later in the season.
That is all I have for now.
Best wishes,
MaLisa
Knowing what my specimens looked like in the filters I am awestruck by the job you’re doing even with those itty-bitty!
Thank you, stay safe and have a good week .
Mary Brennan
I am really enjoying hearing about the sorting, identification, and seeing the photos! Thanks for your hard work.
I looked at the first photo and said that’s a big grain of rice!
Looks like you are having fun. Thanks for the update.
Thanks for sharing all of the photos and information. Really like your “grain of rice” comparison!
Thanks for sharing all your discoveries. It is amazing how you are able to separate out the different species. I thought for sure they’d all be squashed!
Like the grain of rice comparison, definitely puts the little buggers into context. Thank you for all the hard work!