Brandon Claridge

‘I love midges because I know what their hearts look like’: is the passion for taxonomy in danger of dying out? Insect taxonomist Art Borkent has described and named more than 300 species of midges but fears his field of science is dying out, despite millions of insects, fungi and other organisms waiting to be ...

www.theguardian.com/environment/...

I'm just finishing interpreting the DNA barcodes on my wasps, and now it turns out you can regularly have different barcodes in the same (sawfly) wasp! 😅

Nice work, and something to keep in mind when splitting wasps into species based on DNA.🧪

Might have to change the website name to reflect the broader coverage now.

My goal is for IONA to be a one stop shop platform for Ichneumonid identification and taxonomy. I'd really appreciate all the help I can get with imaging species and writing up the subfamily/ genus guides, especially if you're an ichneumonid taxonomist!

- non-Nearctic genera pages available by selecting worldwide in genera side bar

Lots of new features on ichsofna.org:

- species lists now provide complete synonym history
- hover over a species name to see a popup with images (if available), a distribution map, and a list of recorded hosts
- toggle species between Nearctic and worldwide
#ichneumonidae #insects #entomology

On the genus Sericopimpla Kriechbaumer, 1895 (Ichneumonidae, Pimplinae) in the Afrotropics, with the description of a new species Sericopimpla Kriechbaumer, 1895 (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Pimplinae) is a moderately large Darwin wasp genus distributed mostly in the Paleotropics and Australasian region. Here, we describe a new ...

Another new species out! 🥳 Please welcome Sericopimpla kibalensis. 🧪

A genus earlier mainly known from tropical Asia and Australia, with just one African species. After our Ugandan collecting, there are now two.

In @zookeys.pensoft.net with @ilarisaaksjarvi.bsky.social, me, Emil, Kari, Simon.

Photographs, Harmomima spp. A–C, J, K H. glabra (body: dorsal, ventral, frontal; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral) D–F, L, M H. prominens (body: dorsal, ventral, lateral; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral) G–I, N, O H. sulcata (body: dorsal, ventral, lateral; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral).

Photographs, Thesium spp. A–C, J, K T. apicalis (body: dorsal, ventral, lateral; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral) D–F, L, M T. crenulatum (body: dorsal, ventral, lateral; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral) G–H, N, O T. magnaclavus (body: dorsal, ventral, lateral; aedeagus: dorsal, lateral)

A long time in preparation, the 'big monograph' from my sabbatical last year is finally submitted. These beauties (and about ~350 more) will soon be known to the world!

I've added country species distribution data from Taxapad (still need to get data for a few subfamilies) to ichsofna.org. By clicking on a country/state you will get a list of all ichneumonids that occur there (up to 2016).

#trackerwasps #ichneumonidae #insect #taxonomy #biodiversity #entomology

What strange little critters.

New #IONA feature! The choropleths on the genus page now not only show diversity per state/province, but when you click on one, it will show you the list of recorded species. ichsofna.org/Ichneumonina...
#wasps #JS #ichneumonidae #entomology #biodiversity #taxonomy

Then again, what is a Malaise trap but a field ichneumonid slot machine.

I would go broke at the slot machine if the wasps in question were the nice ichneumonid kind.

Been adding a lot of new species to ichsofna.org. Here's a stunning species of as yet unidentified Glypta from Wyoming. It's no trivial task to ID these since there are 316 Glypta species in North America!

#insect #entomology #ichneumonidae #parasitoid

Review of the genus Xanthephialtes Cameron (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae), with re-definition of the genus and description of a new species from Uganda Xanthephialtes Cameron, 1906 (Hymenoptera, Ichneumonidae, Pimplinae) is a small Afrotropical Darwin wasp genus with only two previously known species, for which we provide images of the holotypes. Her...

Yay, our new species is out! Only two Xanthephialtes species were known to exist from before, now we've added a third from Uganda.

Please welcome: Xanthephialtes iida sp. nov! 🧪🐣🥳 Named after Emil's wife.

In @zookeys.pensoft.net with @ilarisaaksjarvi.bsky.social, me, Emil, Kari, Simon.

Two interesting things in this paper:

Idiobionts* were caught more in the dry season, koinobionts not, which is what I'm starting to see in the Ugandan data too.

40 trap years of collecting gave only 10,000 wasps, wonder why so much less than in Uganda? 🤔

A good mystery is always fun. I can't imagine the work some of those old timers did back in the day.

I've been trying to figure out (at least sort of morphospecies) some of the MANY nearctic Ophion in my personal collection. I'll have to try and use that scutellar caraine character.

What other interesting bits do you have?

Here are the figures for the two new Ctenichneumon species. How many differences can you spot??

#entomology #Ichneumonidae #parasitoid #insects #taxonomy #newspecies

While this is a somewhat trivial example, the LLM approach would be much more useful for someone who initially didn't a genus identification and needed to sift through of the ~730 Nearctic ichneumonine species. For fun, here is the species in question: Cratichneumon fossorius.

The overview of the paper was spot on, too. As the author, I can confirm there aren't any hallucinations, at least for this small example. This could be a game changer for non-experts to get useful information from taxonomic papers.

#entomology

From website development to image classification apps, I've been interested in improving ID resources for a long time. I've been exploring using NotebookLM as an ID tool and am extremely impressed. Here's a test based on one of my publications:

#entomology #taxonomy #ichneumonidae #insects #ai

Working on describing this couple of new Ctenichneumon species from the Huachuca Mountains in #Arizona. Too bad they are both singletons! Hopefully someone can find the males eventually.

#insect #newspecies #entomology #nature #photography #ichneumonidae #trackerwasp #wasp

Maine*

A few of the 31 species I've sorted are probably described, but only known from Colorado or British Columbia, for instance. I bet the majority are undescribed, however.

You can see more at ichsofna.org.

Due to the massive diversity of Ichneumon (and other Ichneumonini), it's practically impossible to tell most species apart, like all of these brownish-red females.

Added a few newly collected Ichneumon species to Ichneumonids of North America. Amazingly, I've found 31 different species based on females when records only show 4 for the state! Compare that with 57 species in Main, which is probably a fairly complete inventory.

#entomology #newspecies #taxonomy

I can't believe no one called me out on this one! It's really just an incredibly obscure species called Pseudoamblyteles homocerus. I had overlooked the small propodeal apophyses. Well, still a new Utah state record!

A brown pseudoscopion hanging on to the antenna of a wasp. The wasp is yellow with black stripes and transparent wings.

My first pseudoscorpion observation was pure luck. Happen to see this wasp and took a shot. It was only later did I see what was hanging on the antenna.

On iNaturalist [ www.inaturalist.org/observations... ]

The crucial character is the pectinate tarsal claws which is very unusual among #Nearctic #ichneumonines.