wowsomany's Favorites

*Rare in state, my specific target today. One of 5-10 individuals seemingly frequenting only Fen Grass of Parnassus flowers, which were abundant at this location. All observations relating to separate individuals (as best as I could determine).

Same as last year - https://www.inaturalist.org/observations/137831725
At the Andrena regularis nesting aggregation. Andrena were almost gone, just stragglers, and the Nomada were having a field day.
Still a lot of photos from this time last year I haven't gone through, including a very small Andrena seen at this aggregation. Hoping for some time to sort through these soon...

Ctenocolletes nicholsoni (Thanks Terry) Large hairy bee feeding on Scaevola and Grevillea
Identified as Ctenocolletes centralis on Bowerbird by Bernhard Jacobi: "Sorry, I was so excited that I wrote "nicholsoni" in my identification, which should have read "centralis". I just started to move in bowerbird, so I do not know yet how to undo or correct identifications!"

Would love some ID help on this one, as I wasn't having great luck with DiscoverLife on it. This lone female was seen in a nesting aggregation of A. regularis on a dirt hiking path at the edge of woods and field.
I'll spare you the ~100 or so photos I took and summarize the features that were visible in one photo or another:

• broad pale foveae
• weak but probably(?) complete tergal fasciae. By viewing various angles I think they are complete but definitely sparser in the middle.
• Fine, distinct, somewhat crowded punctures on scutum
• Vertex ~1-1.5 ocellar distances
• F1 equal or slightly greater than F2+F3
• pygidial plate with raised internal triangle
• m+cu vein meets submarginal cell at around 2/3 of the way
• tibial scopa pale (with dark hairs extending from basitibial plate)
• tergites appear crosshatched, not shiny.

I was not able to get any shots showing the face head-on, as the bee kept turning away from me. One oddly-angled photo appeared to show a long malar space and an unpitted midline but I cannot be certain. Good-sized, a little larger than the male A. regularis roaming about.
Flowers blooming at this location nearby were Salix, Hepatica, and Sanguinaria. I do have some footage of it digging as well, but it only shows the abdomen. Soil was dense, clay-loam I am guessing. Not sand.

Large nesting aggregation on a hiking path, bees very active digging. Identified from both female and male specimens; already-dead individuals were collected from the nest sites. Specimens were retained if further photos are needed.

A Leaf Insect encountered feeding on Phanera sp. (Fabaceae). It was just about 0.6 m above the forest floor near the stream.

The third photo is its egg. Top images are newly laid while bottom images are eggs with the already expanded frills as it was exposed to humidity.

Estas fotografías fueron capturadas en la Reserva Biológica Uyuca, junto al Dr. Eric van den Berghe. Esta especie perteneciente al reino Plantae se caracteriza por poseer hojas enteras y ovadas, además de flores hermosas, vistosas de color blanco y morado, con 7-9cm de diámetro.

Además de emplearse como planta ornamental es usada de forma comestible y medicinal en Centroamérica.

1st molecular confirmation of Massospora diceroproctae made from individuals I collected from this location.

See pink fungus in genital area.

Matt Kasson from the University of West Virginia alerted me to this possibility from my iNat post of this cicada and undertook DNA barcoding using my samples.