Pepsis or Hemipepsis? - Pepsis

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Photo#234929

Copyright © 2005 Aaron Schusteff

Pepsis or Hemipepsis? - Pepsis -

East of Kelbaker Rd, a few miles south of I-40, San Bernadino County, California, USA
June 7, 2005

Here's a photo labeled with my attempt at interpreting the salient wing venation & cells, working from general Hymenopteran wing diagrams in Borror, Triplehorn, and Johnson(1). I'm a bit leary of my interpretation of the "1st submarginal cell"...as it doesn't look very "sub"marginal to me. Also, what I'm calling the "1st discoidal cell" is labeled as "1M" in Fig35-33D (with no elucidation in the caption) on page 696 of Borror, et.al.(1). Hoping someone will correct me if I'm in error here, so that I (and others) can learn some of this arcane stuff :-)

Images of this individual: tag all

Contributed by Aaron Schusteff on 19 October, 2008 - 10:00pm

Yes, Pepsis

Your labelling is correct. Don't forget the apical separation of the marginal cell from the wing margin as a character; all other pepsines have the marginal cell apically adjacent to the wing margin.

… Nick Fensler, 20 October, 2008 - 8:04am

Thanks Nick!

Good to know I'm on track with the labelling! The edition of Borror, Triplehorn, and Johnson I worked from has diagrams with three different schemes for generalized hymenopteran wing nomenclature, but the diagrams didn't seem to fit especially well the cell/venation geometry of the particular wasp under study.

Thanks also for mentioning the separation of the marginal cell from the apical wing tip. Although it's the first wing venation item mentioned on the Pepsis info page, its meaning didn't click with me until I read your comment above!

… Aaron Schusteff, 21 October, 2008 - 11:39pm

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