male velvet ants

there is an unused baseball field that has TONS of velvet ants and cicada killers.but there are hundreds of male velvet ants. it it unusual to see that many?

Contributed by beenut on 17 July, 2006 - 7:35pm

well if you ever are out ther

well if you ever are out there again collect some for us. I would love to get some. you can dig out the pupa cells of the digger wasps during the winter with a sifter and incubate them, and raise mutillid adults out of them. It has been done before with other species.

… William Ericson, 3 September, 2006 - 9:36am

I'm Envious:-)

Well, velvet ants 'can' be abundant in the vicinity of their hosts, and the males tend to 'cruise' such places looking for females. I would encourage you to take some images and keep notes on this. Host associations for velvet ants are few and far between, and for the "cow killer," Dasymutilla occidentalis, largely speculative. Would be nice to have some documentation to back it up!

… Eric R. Eaton, 18 July, 2006 - 12:00pm

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