Very Late Solitary Wasp

[tigger]

Hi. We found this wasp climbing the stairs last night.

To start with I thought it was a Mellinus arvensis - a Field Digger Wasp - but the pictures I can find of them don't show such long reddish antennae (which this one had as you can see from the pics).

I'd have thought it was very late for a solitary wasp.... guess it's the mild weather.

Any thoughts? Thanks. Jane

[ChrisR]

The long antennae (more than 13 segments) show that it is an ichneumon wasp, rather than a Solitary wasp It is a bit late so it's a good sighting but I can't say more than it might be genus Ichneumon or Amblyteles ... or something else! If you post the photos on HymIS then you should get a name though

PS: I notice HymIS is down but keep trying and it should be fine later.

[tigger]

Thanks Chris. Appreciate your help. I haven't come across the HymIS forum before.

Cheers

Jane

[ChrisR]

The people on HymIS are very good - just join up and post your photos to the section that reads "Ichneumonoidea / Schlupf- und Brackwespen" with the date and place that you saw it and they should get you a name

[tigger]

It has been suggested by a member of HymIS forum that it is a Amblyteles armatorius female - Ichneumon wasp. Looking at other pictures of this wasp they seem to have broader yellow bands on the abdomen... but maybe the female is more striped black/yellow as this one is. From the underneath shot you can see how striped it must be above...

I've also looked up Amblyteles armatorius on the NBN gateway and it seems to be very under-recorded in my area (obviously doesn't mean it's rare, just not recorded). I'm hesitant to put it down as a Amblyteles armatorius as I know that Ichneumons can be really difficult to id without looking at them very closely.

Wondered what others thought?

[ChrisR]

Well, everyone is capable of making mistakes (especially with ichneumons) but if Camille Thirion thinks it is Amblyteles armatorius then you can't get much better than that One of the problems with ichneumons is that they are quite variable in colour and identifications made from photos really require an expert who knows the limitations and the other possible species to be able to make a judgement.

I would completely ignore any NBN distributions for ichneumons because they are very 'data deficient' and some of the data they have is possibly wrong anyway. I don't want to malign the NBN, because its data is very reliable, but ichneumons are so hard to identify well that it is more likely that the data contains errors

PS: did you have a look at her gallery of photos?

[tigger]

I'm sure she's right. Having seen all the work she has been involved in, she is obviously an expert in this field. I will thank her for her ID.

Cheers

Jane