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September 05, 2006
Welcome to Six-legged Wonders
As collection manager of the UMMZ Insect Division, my duties include the care and maintenance of our collections. Dead insects can tell tales, but live ones are so much more fun to observe. The Museums Building houses millions of specimens, but it's the apperance of a single new species that set me buzzing.
The Exhibit Museum installed a butterfly garden near the front entrance last year, and their work has paid dividends to all the various species of Hymenoptera that visit the flowers there. In early august, I observed and subsequently collected a new state record species of sphecid wasp, Isodontia elegans. Mountain mint is a great attractor for solitary wasps, and that is where I captured two voucher specimens of this pretty thread-waisted wasp.
Posted by mfobrien at September 5, 2006 03:50 PM