היומן של gcsnelling

For all of those who get the warm and fuzzies when they see a Velvet ant (Mutillidae). I wanted to let those of you that are unaware that there is a new resource available. Velvet-Ants-of-North-America, I have only glanced thru my copy but from what I can see this is going to be a very valuable tool when it comes to working with our velvet ant species. Our own Kevin Williams is one of the co-authors. Congratulations on a fine job Kevin.

https://press.princeton.edu/books/paperback/9780691212043/velvet-ants-of-north-america

Just spents an hour or so slogging around in the swamp taking pictures, well sort of. Who woulda thunk that the default setting on my D90 was for the camera to have a shutter release action with no memory stick in the camera. I sure didn't. Well now I know and have changed that setting to where it should be by default.

Well another one bites the dust. The beetle genus Gibbifer is apparently no longer considered to be a valid genus having been replaced with Cypherotylus.

https://www.biolib.cz/en/taxon/id309500/

This is likely going to have an impact on records we have here.

Xylocopa sonorina Smith, 1874 from Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada (Hymenoptera: Apidae, Xylocopinae) with comments on its taxonomy

https://bdj.pensoft.net/article/49918/

Something that may be of interest to those with an interest in Neuroptera

Catalogue and Monograph of the
Species and Subspecies of the
Extant and Extinct
Neuroptera, Megaloptera, Raphidioptera, and Glosselytrodea
(Insecta: Neuropterida) of the World

Version 6.0
(release date: 23 March 2018)

John D. Oswald
Department of Entomology, Texas A&M University
College Station, Texas 77843-2475 USA

http://lacewing.tamu.edu/SpeciesCatalog/Main