Working with a live specimen

On Friday I found this potter wasp (one of the small, solitary nesting wasps) running around on the landscape contractor's bright green car. I thought I'd have a crack at identifying it to species using just a hand lens, which turned out to be an arduous way to spend a Saturday...

Step 1:  Put wasp in tube into the fridge to anesthetise

Step 2: Take out the book on solitary wasps

Step 3: Turn to first key in book, take chilled wasp out the fridge, start keying...

It seems that everything pretty well matches the family Eumenidae, which takes me to the next part of the book...

Step 4: Keying from the Eumenidae, following on until we get to couplet 7, which is over to the next page.

Oh no!

Ah jeez.

Step 5: Get stool from kitchen, retrieve tiny wasp from ceiling.

She's back in the tube and she's angry.

Quickly, to the next page....

It looks like she's an Ancistrocerus! We are getting there.

Step 6: Continuing on to try to get her down to species...

Hmm, a groove or step on 2nd ventral plate.... Is this it?

To me it looks like there is a step, but then a bulge. It's very difficult to get a decent picture in the hand and at the correct angle. Even after putting her back in the fridge for a while, she simply warms up again very quickly and dashes about.

Might she be Ancistrocerus nigricornis?

I'm just not sure whether this is simply the normal join between two ventral plates on the abdomen. Looking ahead in the rest of the key, it refers to the underside of the 2nd ventral plate, but my pictures are not clear enough. This is where we get stuck without using a microscope and other preserved specimens for comparison.

For many small invertebrates, photographs can only really take you so far in terms of identification, so I'll be told by entomologists that I should have kept the specimen. But seeing as I have a backlog of other material to microscope...

See ya Ancistrocerus sp., back to caterpillar hunting you go. 

British fungal firsts at Gatwick!

We've had a pretty awesome update from local fungi expert, Nick Aplin... coming about 3 months late due to my email filter sending important things to my junkmail!!

Nick and the Sussex Fungi Group at Upper Picketts Wood, November 2013

You might bump into the affable Mr Aplin about the Gatwick woodlands, where he keeps a sharp eye out for unusual fungi species (which to me would be just about all of them). Some of these finds are extremely cryptic and I'm still blown away by how he does it. More incredibly, one of Nick's most recent findings has been previously unrecorded in Britain!

Arecophila striatispora growing on Pendulous Sedge. Photo by Nick Aplin

Ok, so it might be hard to know what we are looking at here...This is a fungus growing within the tissue of a plant, specifically Pendulous Sedge. Fungi which can be found within plants are called endophytes; they are not highly visible, but they can have very complex relationships with their host plant and we are finding out new things about them all the time. For example, some species might be harmful to their host, whereas others can share nutrients and may even protect them from disease.

Ascospores of Arecophila striatispora (Photo by Nick Aplin). Each ascus contains several spores

It is incredible to think how a relationship between two distinct organisms like this might have evolved, possibly one was coerced into becoming reliant on the other (in the world of psychotherapy this is described as codependency and is generally discouraged in humans).
   This particular fungus belongs to the group Ascomycota, as it produces reproductive spores in a little sac called an 'ascus'. This feature helps us to classify certain fungi and with clever tests such as staining the asci with iodine, we can narrow them down to the particular genus or species.

Nick's home lab set up: Brunel SP150 microscope. The scope at the top is a Nikon camera adapter which boosts the magnification, useful whether dissecting or simply photographing specimens

This species has been confirmed by the experts in Europe as Arecophila striatispora, previously unrecorded in our fair isles and so is a great achievement for Nick. Also, kudos to the guy for not slicing off his fingertips during some incredibly fiddly dissection work.
   But that's not the end of it, because Nick has recently discovered yet another first for Britain on our site! 

Gnomonia amoena fruiting body on the petiole of a Hornbeam leaf (Photo by Nick Aplin)

This rather disturbing looking thing is the fruiting body of a fungus (Gnomonia amoena), growing on the stem of a Hornbeam leaf. Have you ever seen the movie Dreamcatcher? It reminds me of the sinister (and gross) alien in that. 
   Apparently, this sinister looking thing belongs to a group of fungi which are very harmful to trees, but luckily this particular species is quite benign (unless you happen to be an individual Hornbeam leaf, then you should RUN.)

Gnomonia amoena ascospores, showing a reaction with iodine causing staining at the tips

As you can tell from the characteristic ascospores (you can, right?) this is another ascomycete species. It was found on leaves at the base of our very old and rather impressive Hornbeam tree in Lower Picketts Wood...

Hornbeam (Carpinus betulus). This beauty is a impressive size and the photo doesn't do it justice

The other cool thing is that Nick has yet another tricky specimen in the pipeline, which he is also waiting to get confirmed as a British first...

Cross-section of plant tissue, revealing the as yet unknown species (Photo by Nick Aplin)

...it is another ascomycete

I always look forward to the next update from Nick with his latest macro shots. You can check out more of the beautiful fungal underworld in this album: Nick's fungi at Gatwick.

Ichneumon

...is not a type of Pokemon, but actually a tiny parasitic wasp.

An ichneumonid or braconid wasp. Difficult to photograph through the microscope lense, 

my old camera was better for this!

I got excited when I first saw this under the microscope; I remember lectures on them at uni and how interesting they were. However, as they are very numerous in the malaise trap samples, the novelty has quickly worn off! Still, they are very beautiful and diverse.

Relatively big parasitic wasp (1cm in length) vs. small parasitic wasp

Parasitic wasps are an incredibly diverse group of insects with thousands of species in Britain alone. Like all other wasps, they have the three body segments, but the abdomen, antennae and stinger (ovipositor) are usually very long. The ovipositor is adapted for injecting eggs into other invertebrate eggs or larvae.

The ovipositor is maneuverable; here it is tucked under the abdomen. 

The sheaths or 'guides' normally enclose the ovipositor and help to guide and support it.

The wasp larva hatches out and feeds either within or on the body of the host; some sci-fi movies were almost certainly inspired by these little guys. Even poor ol' Darwin was quite darked-out by them, questioning why a benevolent god would ever create something with such a cruel lifestyle.

Their taxonomy (classification) is very difficult and instead of attempting to identify them, I'll be storing them indefinitely, saving them up for my retirement (which for my generation might be never). As well as ichneumon wasps, related groups such as braconids, chalcids, and eurytomids are likely present in our malaise trap samples, all of which make up a huge group with the general name 'Parasitica'. Some of these are used on a commercial level as biological control agents, keeping down your agricultural and greenhouse pests. Here is a selection of parasitic wasps I've come across so far:

This last one is possibly a gall wasp (Cynipidae). They are actually herbivorous and lay their eggs in host plants, often causing swollen growths called galls on leaves and stems.

Looking at stuff under the microscope is addictive and I've been putting in quite a bit of my free time sorting these trap samples. My make-shift portable invertebrate lab is coming along in leaps and bounds - I have most recently acquired a great big cardboard box!