60 New Species of Dragonflies Found

Cataloging biodiversity continues despite habitat loss, global mass extinction, and fewer and fewer taxonomists being trained. 60 New Species of Dragonflies FoundAnd of course, the beetle people just have to one up us. Lava attraction: 74 new beetle species found hiding in plain sight on a Hawaiian volcano

Yeah, I know, but I think it will turn out that there are more Hymenoptera than any other order. Hardly anyone has studied microscopic parasitoid wasps, but it appears that almost every other species of insect has, at least, one parasitoid preying on eggs and larvae. There are some parasitoid flies also.This is Trissulcus sp., a parasitoid wasp that was part of a group of stinkbug egg parasitoid wasps that I photographed as part of an insect pest biocontrol project. it is only about 1mm in length. One of the feature that made them interesting photo subjects were rows of small pits on their body that looked like cooling louvers on little robots. This is a shot I made with an SEM. It is a lateral view of the thorax. You can see the front and hind wing attachments near the top. These were the stinkbug eggs that I collected the wasp from. You can see that the tops of the eggs have been chewed open by the wasp after it went through the larval stage where it consumed the stinkbug embryo and then went through pupation. If the stinkbugs had survived they top of the egg would be popped open like a hatch. I don't know the species of stinkbug that laid these eggs, but the study I worked on was looking for the best parasitoid to control Halymorpha haly, the brown marmorated stinkbug, an invasive species from Asia, that is spreading from both the east and west coasts of the U.S.Edited by Tanypteryx, : No reason given.

I am pretty sure this is Orthemis schmidti, a male. Orthemis can be tricky because they are variable and several species look similar. Sometimes O. discolor is mistaken for O. schmidti. Some of my friends are convinced that Orthemis is a ring species complex that stretches through the southern U.S. the Caribbean, tropical S. America, and C. America, basically the neotropics. It is a very complex group and so far, molecular studies have not clarified it.I am part of a team that is applying for a NSF grant to do a molecular phylogeny for all the Odonata down to the species level. This would be the first large group of organisms to have their complete evolutionary history mapped.Nice shot!