Monday Night Mystery

What in the world is this strange creature?

The point breakdown* will be as follows:

2 points for order
2 points for family
2 points for genus
2 points for species
2 points for describing the behavior

As in past weeks, you have to be first in each category.

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*What are Myrmecos points good for?  The cumulative winner at the end of the month gets to choose either 1)any 8×10 print from alexanderwild.com, or 2) a guest blog post on a topic of their choosing.

[update]: the answer is here.

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Monday Night Mystery

Alright, Sherlock.  What’s going on here?

Five points each for the identity of the big round thing, for the insect at the top, and for the insect at the side. Ten points for describing the story.

And a freebie point to anyone who comes up with an idea for what to do with all these points.

This scene was photographed in the fall in southern Illinois. Here are close-ups of the critters:

mystery wasp #1

mystery wasp#2

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Update on the oddity

I hadn’t anticipated that my keen readers would try to guess the *species* of the aforementioned oddity, but since the guessing has headed in that direction I’ll post this hint, which shows the much more commonly seen worker caste of our little mystery bug.

Stakes are now at, um, 15 points. Yeah.

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An oddity

This odd little beast crawled out of a leaf litter sample from a mesic oak/pine forest in Florida. Ten points to the first person who picks what it is.

(Not sure what you’ll do with ten points.  But hey.  You’re all a creative lot.)

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Mystery Myrmecophile

I photographed this weird…sluggy thing, I guess you could say, in an ant nest in subtropical Argentina. 

Ten points to the first person who picks what it is.

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