I've been obsessed with this wasp all weekend.
She's a velvet ant. A wingless wasp who hunts on the ground and lives in a little hole. Look she has eyelashes!
Like most velvet ants, only the males have wings. But in Myrmilloides grandiceps they are vestigial. Somehow this is also cute:
I wonder if they use the wings for anything? Maybe to make noise during mating? Why do the males still have little wings, why aren't they wingless like the females?
If they are similar to other wasps I might guess that the males stake out good nest locations to attract mates, so not having wings might make it possible for them to dig?
Why do they have such wide mandibles? In ants these kinds of mandibles help ants to hunt millipedes. So, perhaps they have similar prey?
There is so little information on these wonderful creatures.
