This weeks microscopy is a little bit different than my usual botany posts! We're gonna have a bit of an insect appreciation post.
This is a species of sawfly (Hymenoptera) called Clarissa ruficollis (Pergidae, subfamily Euryinae). I loooooove insects so much, and I think it's really important to have basic insect ID skills in botany. Being able to identify insects to at least family is super useful since insects and plants are so deeply intertwined. They're deeply connected in an evolutionary arms race not only for pollination, but also for herbivory. The life cycles of so many insect species require plants! And so many plants require insects!
Okay, now back to this Clarissa. These images were taken to aid in the ID of the pinned specimen caught during a student field trip to the alpine area of Victoria. Some insect taxa can be really fiddly to ID. There's often very minute characters you have to see in order to get a proper identification, and more often there's only one or two experts on a given taxa. Such is the case here, and the academics who caught it needed to send photos to the expert who lives out of state. That's where I came in! Let's take a look at some of those photos, and I'll put what those images show (from an entomological viewpoint) under them.
"Wings infuscated with black nerves". In entomology, infuscated means there's a brown or smoky tinge to the wings.
"Mesonotum and back of head weakly punctured".
"Face strongly punctured, back of head less; malar space=pedicel length"
Also, see that weird rectangular thing on its eye? That's a butterfly or moth wing scale.
"Antennae 11-segmented; black body with red mesonotum, pleurae"
Now, when I took these photos I didn't know what characters to be looking for. I just know (from past experience) what areas could be important for identification. The characteristics in quotes were given to the photos by expert Paul Whitington. I've given him permission to use this photo series to aid in the identification of this species in the future. The whole series can be found on his website: https://southernforestlife.net/notes/2024/8/2/clarissa-species-identification Hope you all have enjoyed the slight deviation from my botanic photos. There will definitely be more invert series in the future. :)
