argybee's Favorites

A very large fly; approximately 35mm from antennae to wing tips (with wings folded back); very furry thorax and paler beard; dramatic black with 2 yellow stripes on thorax; wings all opaque deep yellow with three groups of black markings; legs proportionally long, black femurs and yellow tibiae and tarsi; eyes large and compact to head similar to several families (soldier, drone, horse) small gap between eyes suggests possible male?; mouth parts looked like a tube with pad - the creature was sopping something from the sidewalk while I watched.

This wasp possibly infected with a parasite that has taken over control of the wasp. Appeared unable to let go of the grass stem. Perhaps the small white objects on the hairs under the head and neck area are related.

Beetle larva
Identified as Holopsis brevicornis on Bowerbird by Ken Walker: "This is a weird beetle larva. I found a colony once inside an ant nest under bark and I took a while to get a name. Here is my record: http://www.bowerbird.org.au/observations/10054"

Rhysodine beetle Leoglymmius lignarius. I dug this rare beetle out of a rotting eucalypt log during the February 2014 Bush Blitz on the Tasmanian Land Conservancy’s Five Rivers property on the Central Plateau. Rysodines are in the ground-beetle family, but act very differently from most others in the family as they seem to spend their entire lives almost immobile, embedded in rotten wood, where they apparently feed on slime-moulds. The species is widespread across south-eastern Australia but very rarely seen, at least in the Tasmanian part of its range.