bsky.app/profile/apsc... 👀

But yes, while there are other groups with such legs, Chalcididae wasps, being 1460 know species, are probably the biggest group of wasps with buff hind legs and it would be a difference between them and the 74 species of yellow jackets and hornets in case you were thinking of those

Thanks!

Which other species do you mean?
There are huge differences among the over 150.000 different Hymenoptera species known so far. Most of them are wasps in the broader sence, such as this one.
As an example for their huge diversity here is a great overview of African Hymenoptera: waspweb.org/index.htm

Thanks for this amazing taxonomy 😂👍

Thanks, you too!

Thanks, Bernard!
The light is diffused by a Guage diffusor shining onto half a white plastic cup above and white paper below

These crystals are almost as soft as wax and usually easy to break off without damaging the specimen.
The greater problem is that they form mostly inside the specimen and can break it apart

Wow! That's already a lot of new people seeing my pictures now :)
Thanks a lot for the shoutout!

yes, it's incredibly tiny but it gets even crazier, as the tiniest wasp is only about one eight her length: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dicopom... (also the smallest known insect)

Thanks! It's even downscaled by bluesky from ~8000 pixels to only 2000 pixels wide. I had to combine two images sideways since it was too big for my lens with a minimum magnification of 2.5x 🤣

One of the great finds while we were hosting a masters module (phylogeny of insects) for students from the University of Hohenheim and doing a field trip near Stuttgart in July 2023. Petr Janšta was with us and able to identify it while it was still busy ovipositing I believe 🤯

I think Exomella, probably Exomella merickeli.
There was a key linked for north American Bhyrrids on Bugguide:
web.archive.org/web/20151017...
Very cool! Would be the first images of this species easily visible online if I'm correct

how about a Bhyrridae? The face gave me a hint here.
Exomella seems to be similar and has hairs like that but I can't find any good images of the north american species

really cool for sure!

*subterranean beetle detected*
Ptomaphagus? (top right)

Living in Europe I found out that Inopeplinae and Metaxyphloeus existed at about the same time working on those parts of the collection and was delighted by their existence.
It's still funny to me that you call salpingids narrow-waisted bark beetles and we call them false weevils in Germany

whoops, don't mind that extra foot...