Robberfly

Well that makes me feel a bit better! I appreciate all your help. I really love this site. Has people out finding organisms they didn't even know were there and learning a bit more about them.

Arthropods are definitely tricky. Part of the solution is to aknowledge that this site is very much for naturalists rather than taxonomists. As such, there is going to be a certain softness to IDs .. but one simply accepts that and enjoys the site for what it IS very good at. A much broader swath of the population can actively participate which can actually result in far more thorough surveys of populations. You may not be able to accurately map gene flow ... but it could give a great idea of what sort of biodiversity is out there. Plus, a lot of people post killer pictures.

Consider, if you will, this specimen: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/805... Now I know exactly where it came from and I have had it under my microscope (albeit live and only for a short time). Still, I can't be certain on the ID because the striped scorpion situation in that part of the world is ambiguous at best and not adequately covered in the literature. In fact, I did a collection trip later that year for the AMNH and hopefully at some point we can better figure out what is actually going on. Still awaiting genetic results to go along with my morpholigical observations.

So yeah, I wouldn't worry too much about misidentifications. At some point if someone conducting a study is looking it over and your data point would extend the range of the species or otherwise present an odd data point, then you can start looking at things more closely and start considering the exact species name to be important. After all, species designations are only reflections of a particular biological hypothesis.

Thanks again skinheaddave!! That was a big help. I think I found the id that matches the one I found. I could be wrong. I've been having trouble finding exact id's for a lot of the insects in my area. I'm sure I've given a lot the wrong scientific names.

The caudal projection seems to narrow it down to genus .. but I don't have a key or detailed range maps (you appear to be in the range of several species) so good luck on a more precise ID.