Been Gone So Long!

Temperature: 89°

Humidity: 58%
Partly Cloudy

I decided to take a little hiatus from my blog, but now I'm back ready to write! This morning I found nature had come to call without me even stepping outside. In our staff kitchen was a beautiful female Blue Margined Ground Beetle (Pasimachus depressus). Look at the size of the mandibles on these babies! Funny part is, they feed on small caterpillars and insect larvae, not human flesh (which in my mind is what they look like they are for!). The picture above doesn't show it very well but the edges of the shell on these ground beetles are a really pretty, but subtle, blue.
This isn't the first insect to find its way inside our visitor center. On my hiatus I had to look up a Five Banded Tiphiid Wasp (Myzinum quinquecinctum) that was found in our maintenance man's truck. It was fairly easy to ID. It's abdomen was long, black, and skinny with very distinct yellow bands encircling it. The strange thing about these wasps is when you look at its stinger, it appears to be curved up and nonthreatening looking. Five Banded Tiphiid Wasps were apparently imported to America to be used as a biological control against Japanese Beetles. These beetles are devastating pests of urban landscape plants. Seems funny that we would import an insect to rid ourselves of another imported insect!

Picture found at: Texas Ento