Jun 18
This is one of the rarest specimens in my collection. But rare doesn’t always mean hard to recognize, thankfully.
Lathiponus semiluctuosus (sometimes called Lathiponus bicolor) is one of the most distinctive European Ichneumonids in the subfamily Ctenopelmatinae. The back of the head is impressed in both sexes (not visible here sadly) and the ovipositor is strangely upcurved in females. Now that I type it out I realize it doesn’t actually sound like that much, but to a Ichneumonid enthusiast it’s a nice break from the nightmare that Ctenopelmatinae identification usually is.
Collected in Central Sweden with a malaise trap during a large scale insect inventory project.