The velvet ant.

When is an ant not an ant? When it is a velvet ant.

Velvet ants are actually a type of solitary wasp with bright colouring and usually a lot of plush hair. This particular velvet ant was captured in Writing on Stone Provincial Park in southern Alberta. It belongs to the species Dasymutilla bioculata (I think). There is a modest amount of variation within the species; a fellow insect enthusiast who goes by the name of Bug Eric (too bad he thought of that name first) has an excellent article about this wasp in one of his posts (click here).

Male velvet ants have wings and cannot sting. Females lack the ability to fly but carry an impressively painful sting. The wasp in the above photograph is a female; her firey colour a testament to the wallop she packs if provoked. Sometimes called cow killers, the pain evoked by a velvet ant sting may rank up to a 3 on the Schmidt Sting Scale (click here for more information). That is halfway between a yellowjacket wasp (2) and a bullet ant (4), which was rated as the most painful insect sting you can get.

The wasp develops by complete metamorphosis. Adults feed exclusively on nectar and pollen. The young are raised in burrows where an adult will capture and paralyze a host insect which is often another solitary wasp species. An egg is laid on the living buffet and the hatchling begins dining, eating noncritical systems first. As the larva develops it begins feeding on more critical systems so that the hosts live as long as possible. Called ectoparasites, the technique is a common one among solitary wasp species.

What keeps the potential prey from defending itself, after all velvet ants have to catch and neutralize other wasps before becoming a victim themselves? The answer is two-fold. Firstly, the potency of the sting ensures success with the first successful strike. Secondly, velvet ants are clad with an especially thick exoskeleton that is very hard to penetrate. In the event that the would-be-prey actually gets an initial stab into the fray, the event is unlikely to affect the outcome of the battle.

Although common throughout North America, I have only ever seen/captured the one. I photographed her in 2009 while holidaying in southern Alberta. I use a smallair tight container with a drop of nail-polish remover soaked into a cotton ball glued to the lid. The insect dies quickly. I mounted her on a stick (far left image) using a nail-polish clearcoat hardener. After the medium dried I attached the stick to a tripod head so that the subject could be manipulated in all three dimensions. I photographed it with a Nikon D200, a bellows, and a reversed 50 mm manual focus Nikkor lens set to its maximum aperture. I used two macro flashes mounted on the lens to provide light.

Thanks for reading.     Ericspix     Eric Svendsen

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