INVERTEBRATE ALERT
This blog provides an informal forum for terrestrial invertebrate watchers to post recent sightings of interesting observations in the southern Vancouver Island region. Please send your sightings by email to Jeremy Tatum (tatumjb352@gmail.com). Be sure to include your name, phone number, the species name (common or scientific) of the invertebrate you saw, location, date, and number of individuals. If you have a photograph you are willing to share, please send it along. Click on the title above for an index of past sightings.The index is updated most days.

July 5 morning

2020 July 5 morning

 

   Mr E sends a miscellany of photographs, which are a challenge to identify.  If any viewer can help with any of these, please let us know:  jtatum at uvic dot  ca

 

One hesitates even to think of identifying aphidids, but, writes Jeremy Tatum, I think these ones on a young Broom pod may be Acyrthosiphon pisum:

 

Probably Acyrthosiphon pisum (Hem.: Aphididae)  Mr E

 

Spittle Bug Philaenus spumarius (Hem.: Cercopidae)  Mr E

 

Spittle Bug Philaenus spumarius (Hem.: Cercopidae)  Mr E

 

   Dr Robb Bennett confirms Mr E’s identification of the spider below as Tibellus and almost certainly T. oblongus.

 


Tibellus (almost certainly oblongus) (Ara.: Philodromidae)  Mr E

 

   I despair of identifying this fly.  Perhaps some viewer can help?

 

Unidentified fly (Diptera)  Mr E

 

   Ichneumons are even more difficult.  Parasitoidal hymenopterans known loosely  (and not always correctly) as “ichmeumon wasps” belong to several Families, but I believe this one is probably a genuine ichneumon wasp of the Family Ichneumonidae.

 

Hym.: probably Ichneumonidae    Mr E

 

More, awaiting identification, to come…