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Friday, December 23, 2011

The Wasp!

You may (or more likely, not) recall that I hypothesized the existence of a blue wasp with orange legs here in Chiloe in this post because I found a very wasp-like beetle that seemed to visually and behaviorally mimic a wasp. A couple days ago, while walking the same path, I found a quite intriguing wasp!


Unfortunately, the strong light blew out the metallic blue wings. To refresh, here is the original beetle:


They were roughly the same size and found in the same habitat (forest edge). Does this prove anything? Absolutely not. It would be pretty hard to "prove" that the beetle is a mimic - perhaps impossible - and thus my assertion is entirely unscientific. But I did imagine the existence of a medium-sized metallic blue wasp with orange legs and sure enough, it showed up!

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