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Bluebottle, aka Blue 'ant' wasp

Diamma bicolor

Description:

A type of flower wasp, Blue "ants", aka Bluebottles, have a distinctive metallic blue-green body, with red legs. The female ranges up to 25 mm (1 inch) in length, is wingless and ground-dwelling, and exclusively hunts mole crickets, whereas all other species of tiphiids attack beetle larvae. The male is winged and about half her size.

Habitat:

It is a native of south and southeast Australia, including the Australian states of Tasmania, New South Wales, Victoria and South Australia. This one was in our garden.

Notes:

It is the sole member of the subfamily Diamminae, and is both morphologically and behaviorally unusual among members of the family Tiphiidae. This female was very aggressive and kept raising her abdomen to mock a stinging attack.

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10 Comments

Ingrid3
Ingrid3 3 years ago

I still so love this species pic!

tedspecker
tedspecker 4 years ago

found one today at my front door at ashville south australia
not afraid of me opening and closing front door so I imagine they are not to be messed with! very pretty colour

Kartman
Kartman 6 years ago

I think there must be a derth of crickets on my property. I watched a jurassic moment when a female wasp had caught and was dragging quite a large spider.

Ingrid3
Ingrid3 10 years ago

What a remarkable wasp!

beautiful capture lori.tas,congrats and thanks for sharing

KarenL
KarenL 11 years ago

Gorgeous!

YukoChartraw
YukoChartraw 11 years ago

So beautiful...

lori.tas
lori.tas 11 years ago

This one was in a hurry to get away, that's for sure, Argy. Thanks Martin. I think I've seen that striped and winged one about as well, so it's a good conjecture. I'll keep an eye out for it now. I've spotted this species of Native flower wasp a few times now, once mated to the male, and always in our veggie garden: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/264...

MartinL
MartinL 11 years ago

Terrific photo Lori.
I think this is the male but its hard to find a good confirmation
http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/847...

Mark Ridgway
Mark Ridgway 11 years ago

Super shot lori. We didn't see these for many years but they're back.

lori.tas
Spotted by
lori.tas

Bagdad, Tasmania, Australia

Spotted on Feb 2, 2013
Submitted on Feb 3, 2013

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