Learn to ID Bees-20240807_130400-Meeting Recording

August 7, 2024, 5:04PM

1h 5m 48s

Droege, Sam 0:03
Share my screen and what we're using is the Discover Life email pneumatic key.
For now, we did one session already.
Sort of did the initial set of character that now we're going to go into trickier ones as the tricky group, OK.

Maffei, Clare J 0:22
We also don't have your camera on my friend.

Droege, Sam 0:25
Oh, right.

Maffei, Clare J 0:27
OK, now we see it, but we still don't see your wonderful face.
If that was something you wanted to display.

Droege, Sam 0:32
And it should be.
Coming on here.
And my new T shirt that my daughter got me.

Maffei, Clare J 0:40
There you go. What?
I'm delighted by that.

Droege, Sam 0:49
I like it too.

Maffei, Clare J 0:49
That is fantastic.

Droege, Sam 0:49
I love.
I love Hello Kitty and so right?

Maffei, Clare J 0:53
New fax it was just Sam's birthday.
Was this your birthday present?

Droege, Sam 0:57
It was so is.

Maffei, Clare J 0:58
Delightful.

Droege, Sam 0:59
Can you see the Nemata guide now?

Maffei, Clare J 1:03
We can, yes.

Droege, Sam 1:04
OK, you can or can't.

Maffei, Clare J 1:07
Yes, we can.

Droege, Sam 1:08
OK, good.
So we went through some of the characters, one of.
So we're gonna go and talk about the red haired group, as Mitchell would call them and we're going to then get into the key to doing it indications for at least a female, but really the males too.
Even trickier though, which are hind tibia CT, but for now, let's deal with the SCAPE.
So if we first of all let me knockout up here, it's has wording that gets rid of some specimens for which only the meals are known and some other things that are tricky.
And then we go back down here, to our character of choice, which is this, umm, character about red hair redness.
So basically you have a set of specimens that when you look at the head, particularly the scape and the Clippers and the labor room, that's where it's most obvious they have instead of white seetal hairs sticking out, I normal looking ones, they have some that are a tiny bit thicker and let's see what it says here.
In addition to the normal, so there is the ohh who spells were very well here but the the normal translucent or partially translucent white hairs sometimes with a yellowish cast.
There are some longer, stiffer, more upright and opaque red scatters.
Partially easy to overlook, but the group as a whole has a vibe too, which is very difficult to I'm actually describe.
I'll do a little attempt here.
They tend to have more black in there.
Integument, the places where you would have a yellowish cast to or manipulations as we would call them.
I'm two is more of a I recall it maybe an ocher dark orange to Rick ish colored and that is a umm kind of a indicative of the whole group.
When you see that not all but a bunch, so let's go to look at on the scope here and I think I'm in live view and I wanna say oops, sorry.
Invoke this that I should be seeing something.
What happens when I turn off the light?
It is not reacting.
Ohh, maybe you have to hit live.
Let's try that.
Don't tell me we have the same problem again and last time.
Which?

Maffei, Clare J 4:07
Was the thing that we did last time that you had to close this out and have it open before after the teams opened?

Droege, Sam 4:10
Ohh.

Maffei, Clare J 4:14
Ohh you got it.

Droege, Sam 4:15
That might have been.
I got it now though.
OK, so.
And it realized I could get the.
Window to become at least doubled in size up here as interesting.
I'm wonder if I can.

Maffei, Clare J 4:32
Ohh, and we see your mouse back up at a big size which we didn't have last week, yeah.

Droege, Sam 4:35
We do.
OK weird.
I I'm going to do the control F3 to get on here.
OK, so here's the vibe of the the it's mostly the face that has this vibe, but the abdomen a bit has a vibe of its own.
So you can see here there is some a yellowish to orangish oak or maybe I would call it color to it.
That tends to be different usually in the other nomada these areas would be red like red, red, like more like this down here, although that's really same kind of coloration I read or and the yellows would be yellow like bright yellow.
Like maybe more like that.
So in this case it is, uh, not so.
And we have the coloration that you see on your screen is pretty indicative.
So these yellow, these red hairs that we're gonna talk about, we'll zoom in on here.
So here's the labrum, and this is a good way to look for them, which is straight down.
So there's these very sticky Audi darker.
You can't really see the color right now, so we're gonna zoom in on that and on the scape.
Let's see what we can see from this far up.
It's not at all obvious.
We'll probably look and.

Maffei, Clare J 6:00
Can you repeat what species you have?

Droege, Sam 6:02
Ohh sorry I didn't say this is nomada gracilis.
If we go back to the guide here, umm, and we press this for the red haired group, you can see first of all there's a couple like Sphere Gaster that are just lingering because we probably haven't seen this.
Very rare.
Haven't seen the female, and so it's just showing up, but this composite gracilis and valida and the Sienna and Santhera are the group that we're talking about.
And then separating them often has to do with the degree that they have manipulations on the abdomen.
We're not so back to.
Umm the screen here, so let's zoom in and take a look at the specimen at high power.
So now we're in high power and the these red hairs are actually scattered throughout.
So you can see I'm just gonna point them out in several different times.
Here is red hairs.
There's a red here.
We're gonna move around.
You can see some red hairs back here at the crown.
It's better.
It's harder to see them when the background is straight down on the entanglement.
The SCAPE should have a bunch and you can see them to some extent here too.
There's red hairs through there.
There's red hairs.
It's just difficult because the angle, well, we'll change that angle there.
So and then this is a good shot.
You can see scattered.
Here's 111111.
These red hairs are obvious and also not obvious, right?
So this is what they look like when you.
So this is a a good opportunity to see what these red hairs look like because it's hard to just explain how they are.
Let me move this so that the labour room is more in focus and the labrum is good, because normally there's not much hair at all on the labrum and here they are just sticking way out and you can see them in outline in contrast to the background.
Somewhat silhouetted, but also it's opaque and there are these white hairs, right?
So those are sort of translucent and those are the normal ones that all pretty much all I would say no matter have on their face.
So let's shift to.
This is typical, as is that coloration, and usually these have a tiranny rim to the cheek and as well, but a bunch of things do.
Let's see if we can get a oblique shot.
Umm so.
Scape I don't think.
Well, let's see what happens.
It's gonna be contrasting with the background of the clay, but it's a little shiny, so maybe it'll show up.
Oh, there's a giant hair on there now.
OK, so you also have the actual antenna in the way, but I think we zoom way in, we can see some of this action.
In some species are more obvious and and other species less, but here we're zoomed all the way up.
There's that hair that just leapt into play.
We're at our Max terms of the.
The microscope and you can see these red hairs on the Skype, but in a lot of ways.
The red hairs on the clipeus were easier to spot, but this gives a it's so unusual to see anything like this on the scapes that it's good to just take a look.
So here's a little bit better shot.
Although the light is reflecting off, I pretty sure those are reddish, although I could be wrong.
Maybe those are white hairs.
They look white from here, but I think it might be the light and these would be again reddish.
So let's look on the at this angle.

Maffei, Clare J 10:35
The can you clarify?

Droege, Sam 10:35
On the clipeus Yep.

Maffei, Clare J 10:36
Like are you showing us the clipeus and all of that?
Because it's a great place to see what those hairs look like.
However, in that location they will also.
They'll also be like that in that location on not red hair group.
No matters.
Or are you giving the advice that while we say escape, we also mean all of these other locations to check for them.

Droege, Sam 10:57
I yeah.
In the guided says SCAPE and labrum as best places look, but basically they're all over the clipeus.
Clippies can be really busy with hairs, so sometimes and the scape and the labrum are places that usually not busy with hair, so that's why I'm pointing those out.
But does that make sense?
So here are you can see white hairs and they're mostly appressed i.e.

Maffei, Clare J 11:19
Yep.

Droege, Sam 11:22
Lying down or short and somewhat branched, these are, I believe, absolutely simple.
In other words, there's no branching on them, and they just poke out above.
So this now I've would hope kind of seems obvious here.
You can see red hairs here too.
Obviously different, but again a little tricky to to.
Talk about additionally this group as a whole of bees tends to one be very early spring, so these are some of the first nomada out.
I will catch them in particularly in pan traps March in this area and I don't know that they're restricted to that time period, but that's how I associate them and they're not very common.
So we're talking, umm, handfuls of specimens over many years that we have collected in our area.
Now umm, I also know that as you go north tends to see more of these in collections and when you go West, of course all bets are off.
I have seen these kinds of things characters out West too, but really the western nomana are even more mysterious than the eastern nomada.
So here's big picture again.
You can see there's just a bunch of these red hairs.
You really do have to kind of go in, otherwise it's I think could be passed over, particularly if you have a specimen that's a bit dirty.
But recall that this orangish color orangish ochre color is also part of the hey.
Maybe I have a red haired specimen.
There's a carinate where I'm a little difficult to see.
Just we talked about this pointing out that down there and the edge, OK.
So that is, umm, one of the specimens I I don't know that we need to see anymore.
They're all pretty much along those lines, and now we'll talk about tibial CT and actually this species is probably a good one that just go ahead and start with because it has, it should have a lot of it depends on.
Yeah, I think it should be able to see this pretty well depends on its visibility. OK.
And then let me get it up on screen and then we can talk about orientation and how to think about this.
Because it took me a while to become aligned with, to be.
City is there.

Maffei, Clare J 14:08
Once, once we get through this little bit, can we go back and just do a quick like show and tell of these are the red hairs and these are not on the face just to have them right next to each other in our brains.

Droege, Sam 14:08
I think that's the high end leg.
Uh, sure.

Maffei, Clare J 14:20
Thanks.
We're probably going to have the same question for the CD.

Droege, Sam 14:21
Oh, you mean, like, get bringing?
Bringing you mean pull another specimen that doesn't, or what do you mean?

Maffei, Clare J 14:26
Yes, exactly.

Droege, Sam 14:28
Yeah, OK.

Maffei, Clare J 14:29
Just to just be like ohh I saw the copies of this, I saw that got it.

Droege, Sam 14:34
Great.
Alright, so.
This.
Umm, actually I you know what I wanna make sure that I am looking at and hind leg here cause the middle leg sometimes have umm.
CT also, but we are looking at the middle leg, so this is good and put it back in, see if I can align it online.
So we're still looking at gracilis and let me get this in focus and you look at that and you're like there's nothing much going on there, but there is so much going on there.
So here is the hind.
What did I say?
Yeah, it's the hind.
Gosh, is it the hind femur or tibia?
I want to say it is the tibia.

Maffei, Clare J 15:33
Stevia.

Droege, Sam 15:34
Yeah.
So umm, so actually and you can see some of the side characters here.
Here's look, this has pretty stark red hairs on the legs.
We don't usually use them as characters because there's usually an analog or something better like the red hairs on the face for many of these species, but it's something in the scheme of things that differs between nomada, but it is relatively rare that we're using leg hairs, 2 separate things in bees, but in terms of vibe and morpho sorting, that can also be something to look at.
So back to the tibia.
So when we I'm gonna jump in here and bring this up as much as.
So this is as far as the.
The scope goes, so it's difficult, but a lot of you will have scopes that don't go any further anyway.
So what you're looking at here is the tibia, right?
And here is the end, and there's usually a corner, sort of a right angle.
It's not really a spine at all.
It's just a uh projecting triangle of integument that sticks out there in most species.
That's sort of a can be an orientation for you and then across the outer face.
So this is the face of the leg that would be facing outside.
It's not on the inside, it's not where the tibial spurs.
So for example, these would have tibial spurs too, but you don't see any tibial spurs there behind there they have them.
And so this is in the front and there's no clear idea about why these things exist.
But if we think again about what would normally be here there be a bunch of white hairs and there are white hairs in there.
And then and if you use your imagination mind and had a better scope and we had a better picture, you could see that there's a series of dark red CT coming off the rim right at the rim, projecting out into space.
And we often talk about the relationship of those CT and the surrounding white hairs as to whether they're long or short.
And they can.
These CD can do all sorts of things, so in a few species they're there.
Except that they're very long and thin and white, and so they look a lot like in terms of form.
The white hairs that are normally present, but they're longer.
And if you're like, there's my triangle projecting.
And here's the interior face I'm looking through here, and I see nothing but long white hairs.
Then it's in this white CT group that we would call.
Yeah.
And if you look at this one, and again, you're gonna see this better under your microscope where you have a less pixelation, let's call it more detail and you can rotate this leg around.
And often what I'm doing when I'm looking at these kinds of things to get a good contrasting, umm, picture between what's on the leg and being able to see that in silhouette or whatever is I in a lot of cases the leg is sticking out and I can put my finger as the background.
So I'll put my finger back there so it cleans up if I can.
You know, sometimes you can't because of the physicality of the specimen.
I put my finger behind the specimen.
It might be behind the whole specimen so that I can see, uh, these little clearer.
So a little tip.
So it's the same.
Umm, it's the same hand that I'm using to hold the tip of the the pin under the microscope.
I'll stick one finger, the middle finger behind there to see this tricky stuff better, so we'll show a bunch of different kinds of things here.
So here this has I don't I can't quite tell.
Maybe four or five, six, a couple at least are long.
They're dark red.
They're very obvious, although it doesn't seem obvious I think.
And so that's how this particular species presents.
So I'm gonna show some more.

Maffei, Clare J 20:22
Hey, wait.
Before you move on two questions, Umm Eric asked what light intensity is best for looking at hairs and I also want to ask a specific question about the location of some CT here.

Droege, Sam 20:25
Yeah. Hmm.

Maffei, Clare J 20:36
So which one would you like to start with?

Droege, Sam 20:40
So I think the the answer is more light is better.
We can actually on this specimen, because I have some control because this is being what you're seeing, is mediated through the camera is we can are bump up the.
Lighting and see if that does anything for us.
Umm it's.
Umm, I'm not sure.
Maybe a little.
So yeah, more is better.
This is high, you know, high power work too.
So you're gonna be looking at these things under pretty high powered scopes.
So again, you just seeing the maybe 2-3 there, there's a triangle area.
I think maybe there's a couple more hiding in there.
This is why you're holding in your hand.
You're rotating it back and forth to see these kinds of things, and then what was the other question?

Maffei, Clare J 21:39
So actually keep your mouse right there, because I was asking about a location.
Do you have two kind of chunky red ones there up toward the left?
Right where the top of your crosshair is hitting left.

Droege, Sam 21:50
Yeah, these two.
Ohh no.

Maffei, Clare J 21:53
These.

Droege, Sam 21:53
These little ones, yeah. Mm-hmm.

Maffei, Clare J 21:53
Yeah, those two are those.
Are we seeing those from the other side of the leg or what's happening there because those seem equally chunky but differently?

Droege, Sam 22:00
Umm.
I'll. I'll look.
Yeah, I'll.
I'll my impression is that they're short and they're on this side.
I'm gonna.
I'll look at it when I pull the specimen off and give you a better handle on that.
So I'm I'm not 100% sure, but usually the the CT are only on this anterior face, they're not on the back there.

Maffei, Clare J 22:15
Well, yeah, OK.

Droege, Sam 22:21
I never turned it over and look like, oh, there's more.
It's really this span on, you know, with bounded by on one side.
By this I'm triangle and then it's, you know, progressing along the rim and you can see you always can see them all in one view.
OK, right.
So I'm gonna remove this specimen and I'm going to take a look at it under the microscope and see if I can answer at Claire's question there about the nuance of that.
And I gotta take it off this clay thing.
The end.
Yeah, those were.
Umm on the.
In front of the specimen, there are just shorter or had the appearance of being shorter.
Yep, they seemed to largely have disappeared.
These are small small things too, so it's hard to see, so we score these things pretty broadly and there's categories because some of them can have like 20 or 30 all packed together very densely.
So let's go and we'll.
I'm remembering that you wanna see the normal white face.
So we're going now to a female nomada imbricata, which nomada Imbricata and Lucio Lucio Loyd's are some of the most common species of, you know, amadas.
They're big.
They're probably, and yes, parasites of Mel Andrina and themata perplexity groups, and probably other things.
And they have no red hairs.
So let's look first at the I got no red hairs on my face B.
He hasn't.
Oops, I'm still in very gonna switch out of the spread of light.
And.
Go back down.
Not there.
What if I can click on that button?
It just gets up to that level.
Interesting.
OK.
We'll do control F to get full screen, so these are very bright.
Very colorful because they have lots of Reds and yellows, so we're going to go take a look now at its hind tibia and look at the CT there.
Let me just take a look at the specimen and find them best alignment for a shot.
I think it's on the other side.
Yeah, alright.
So these have two sometimes 3C T, and they're lying over and they're bright red and they're thick, but they are literally curved over on their sides.
Let's call it and I think this is the best shot here, and that's for imbricata and luti lordis.
Those are attended.
So when you see that CT pattern, you know it's one of those two, then you have to look at other things to differentiate the two nomada species.
OK, so this is the wrong side.
So here are the two spurs, so it's on the other side that we want to look not that side.
What am I thinking means?
Just look at this.
Here.
And change it to this view.
So tibial spurs are on the backside.
Lowes.
So there's a hind leg going on to here and the tibial CT that we care about and they may have to do this a couple times to get the alignment right for this particular group.

Maffei, Clare J 27:04
Are you on the bed like there?

Droege, Sam 27:08
Umm, I don't think so.
Let's take a look.
Yeah.
So there's a mid leg.
This is the hind leg.

Maffei, Clare J 27:16
So I saw the one in the background got it.
Thank you. Sorry.

Droege, Sam 27:19
Umm.
Always good to check.
Umm you here is the triangle.
These are the two CT.
We'll just pause here for a second.
I'm gonna get you.
Get you a better look than this, but it's hard because you can't really see how bent they are.
They look fairly straight, just curved down, but they're actually curved and towards the viewer here, so there's one.
There's the other behind it.
There's our pulled out portion of the edge of the interior face of the he had it going into the TBR, which is always there, and we essentially never use that for ID work.
When it's shift it now so that you can see this curvy part of it.
See if I can do this.
You know.
Lot of taking it off the stand.
Let's take this down.
There we are, my leg.
Who?
We didn't move it far enough, but we'll look at it right here anyway.
Uh, just so you can see it again.
So we've shifted it a little bit.
There's the pulled out and taking a triangle.
Here's the two CT right there.
We're going to turn this a little bit more.
In other specimens that area between that triangle and the edge where those CTR would be filled with other CT.
Not in this one, for whatever reason.
Here we see this well enough.
Or do I?
You can see why this is now.
I've bent it over too far.
So when you bend it, bend it in that direction.

Maffei, Clare J 29:38
Did we ever see you like thick clear ones or just the thick red ones?

Droege, Sam 29:43
Say it again.

Maffei, Clare J 29:45
Do we only have the ones that are short and thick like this in the red category, or are there also umm clear or white?

Droege, Sam 29:52
Mostly, they're mostly, yeah.
Mostly they're red, but sometimes a few have on the yellow end of the spectrum, and now this is good.
And then.
Umm.
I'm not sure if they're actually are.
I think there, umm yeah there are.
So in the micro.
Umm.
Nomada group, another uncommon group.
OK, now we're good.
And this one actually has three.
So a lot of times I think it's two or three.
I just think of it as having to.
All right, so we have rotated this whole section a bit.
Here is the pulled out triangle.
It's seen on edge, so it looks more claw like, but seeing straight on it's more like a triangle and we make our little Mary way across the interior face again, often in other species that whole area has CT.
This group does not and we hit the corner the opposite corner from where that triangle is, and here are I wish I could blow this up more, but here are three.
Umm CT curving over like that.
And this is only these two species have that sign.
So there's 123 and you can see in contrast to the last one, these are much fatter and certainly shorter.
There's the our measurement is the.
The height in comparison to the surrounding white hair, which are just ubiquitous.
And they're clearly shorter than the surrounding white hairs, curved over a lot faster.
Fatter.
That combo?
Really, the curving over is umm, you know, locks us into that group of two species.
OK, ready for another set.
So this is useful.
This is, you know, like, yes, of course we know what CTR, but it's really kind of useful because it took me a long time to figure these out where to get comfortable with them or to get the orientation of the tibia CT what am I looking for?
What are they talking about?
Kind of thing.
So let me get a couple more, that's OK.

Maffei, Clare J 32:25
While he's looking, I just wanted to tell everybody your friend Will Peterman sent me an email reminding me that.
Catherine Odaka sent or posted a West Coast revisions to the tomato and I forgot to send those out.
So I'll dig them out and just send them along today.

Droege, Sam 32:41
No, I didn't realize that she had done West Coast umm specimens.
I would like to see that too.
Yeah, she's been working on these things for a while.
Alright articulata, I need a female.
These look like males.
Look, look pretty good in one female in here.
Articulata is related to.
Wait a minute.
You know, that's another meal.
Umm has a host that's not injuring us, so most of NOMADA have hosts in the Drina knew this.
But there's quite a bit of variability and some of the groups that are sometimes included in Hamada.
And so they're not included in nomada wander off.
And.
Pick up other Gendron.
So this crew and I'm showing you now I'm.
I'm moving to Australis and which is closely related to Articulata and the difference between the two is solely based on the relative length of the CT.
So these CT are very important.
So Australis has longer ones and articulata has shorter ones.
Australis is less common, but you can have both in an area.
Articulated in particular can be relatively common and.
They are this parasites of egg pasta mode.
Let me bring this down.
Find our and of the.

Maffei, Clare J 34:50
Both.

Droege, Sam 34:52
Yeah, right.

Maffei, Clare J 34:53
Are we saying both friends in this group, articulate and australias are?
Are parasites of ago Passman or just articulata?

Droege, Sam 35:02
Yeah.
Nope.
Booth and they both look exactly the same.
So in females there's no manipulations, so there's no spots on the abdomen and on the thorax or anything.
It's just this red, very heavily pitted.
Umm.
Specimen.
And then you have to look at behind Tibia and OOP.
There we see.
So you can see here, I believe that's the corner.
And here's where Imbricata had it's CT.
And here in between is now where articulata.
No, australis has what are slightly longer city.
Then Australis are articulated.
Sorry, but here these are pretty easy to see, so this for and we give counts in the of the CTM.
We talk about whether they're opaque or not and color in the guide as some of the characters that help differentiate with plenty of overlap, because sometimes it's difficult to decide whether it's fat or skinny.
But here clearly fat, opaque, red CT marching in a row across recall.
The first one we saw, gracilis had a couple long ones and then shorter ones and they were thinner than this and pointier and longer nomada imbricata had a couple over here and they were all packed together and they were bent over like little hot dogs.
So there is another example and I'm going to show you a few more.
How fun it is to have an entire.
Video on tibial city of Nomada.
I wish I had my whole collection, but I have a pretty good sample here.
We get to look at more.
Let's take a look.
At the bidentate group of no matter which are a big mess, so the.
Group as a whole I worked with.
My rightmyer we think, I think we did like 1000 specimens of nomada and several hundred of these bidet green knew that the vidente group was extremely difficult and problematic and Add all sorts of.
Meals that were not associated with females and that sort of thing, right?
So I'm gonna put this on in the microscope here.
And what we found was that and then umm.
Up at.
Ohh, Sophie Cardinal up in the.
Canadian National collection also did some more work and both kind of came to the same conclusion, using different molecular tools that and neither publish because it was so messy that it was very difficult to have clear groups.
So something's going on there.
I think we've talked about this in the past.
Something is going on.
Here with this group and its sister taxa in the White City Group and but.
They have one of the things that differentiates the vidente group is different from the white CT.
In numerous ways, well, not numerous.
The bidentate mandible is so nice and clear.
Of a feature, but everything else is murky and we just couldn't find clear boundaries.
These Seattle.
So here we go.
Look at these.
Here we have some lovely CT to look at.
There's our projecting triangle.
Most of the action is at the corner.
There's one lone one there and we would look at these and we'd put them into different categories based on the CT patterns and they didn't match the molecules, darn it.
So we're still unclear as to what's going on with this umm group and I do.
I only identify amount of maculata which has uh.
I like pull specimen, but it's got a really big it's got mostly two CT that are shaped as parents and one bigger, one thinner.
Anyway, this is very typical.
Again, a different pattern there.
Umm, this is a bidentate.

Maffei, Clare J 40:14
Is this maculata?

Droege, Sam 40:16
Nope, this is bidentate species, so I don't know what this is.

Maffei, Clare J 40:20
Got it.

Droege, Sam 40:21
That's the problem.
I just call them all by Dente group right now because I don't feel confident in any determinations.
And there's a bunch of names running around that just don't mean anything at this point.
So anyway, you can see pretty long, very red thinner then the last one we were looking at about as thin as the first set that was on the gracilis, but not straight curved.
So there is all this lovely characters and those are pretty stable.
You'll see something like that, but in some there will be 3 and others will be like 10 and then another will have one speed like umm or shovel like or table knife like CT sticking out and they patterns in the molecules will vaguely conform but not absolutely.
So anyway, something's going on there.
Let me pull a couple more specimens that slightly.
Again, the CTR slightly different, so you really want to nail.
Looking at the TCP patterns, even if you're still just doing morphospecies, the CDU patterns are going to tell you a lot.
So we'll do a sister taxi here.
To this is the pigmea group.
What's it look on the surface?
If you looked at them, they look almost exactly the same.
And there is this pattern which I don't know is true or just some story I'm making up that in a particular area, the white CT species look like the bidentate species.
We do know I'm probably certain that these poop.
This is a sneaky little umm specimen that does not belong here.
Yeah, that's because it's composite.
Unlike, this is a red haired species.
So it has similar.
Eating to the first week, so the.

Maffei, Clare J 42:36
Sam, I'm think I'm gonna ask you to write up A1 pager that just sums up some of these groups, cause I know I'm getting lost.
Uh, so just look out for that.

Droege, Sam 42:45
Ah, thanks.
Right.
I could do that not this week, but harass me.
I'm very harass, able, alright.

Maffei, Clare J 42:56
Just dictate it to us and we'll write it.

Droege, Sam 42:56
All right, so now.
Now we're looking at the sister taxon of the Battente species.
This is pigmea Group One or wait is it or is it crysania literally probably doesn't matter pignata.
I have labeled it 'cause.
I don't even trust those group names really, and but I do now.
That it does not have a bidentate.
To kind of work.
Umm try a different angle on this.
It does have a simple mandible with a tooth.
The suit is not abiding to group, only the bidentate group has 2-3 animals and it has White City.
Or does it?
Darn it.
A Biden take specimen got.
I'm looking at this the CTM, like those or not white.
And indeed it is a bidentate group specimen alright.
Why is it in there?
Let's go back and find the problem is I have lots of meals in this partial collection.
What do you say?
OK, it's not.
You'll have to call pick and the weird thing is I'm not down, but I might actually be.
So we have been having some problems with pick.
I wonder if I let me go back here, go to this and Julia refresh.
We've been having some discover life pick is working with us on discover life.
Yeah, it looks like it's down on my part to hang on for one second.
Let me call where's my cell phone?
No.

Maffei, Clare J 45:05
Can we ask Sydney to call or whoever is in there?

Droege, Sam 45:07
But I'm 50.
Could you can't take.
You can't pick do.
You should not call because it's gonna be a 2 hour.
OK, well, he's waiting for us to say and he'll reboot server.
OK.
Thank you, Cindy.
Alright, blah blah blah and ohh anyway so I'm trying to find a flooding is not a male here.
That seems to be not the case.

Maffei, Clare J 45:34
They would now be uh.
Or after this B Joan has a really good question that seems like it might be a complex answer, so just know that that's coming down.

Droege, Sam 45:42
Umm.

Maffei, Clare J 45:44
Do you want me to read it now?

Droege, Sam 45:45
OK, uh, you can read it now and I'll try and get this.

Maffei, Clare J 45:45
Or do you wanna get your beef up?

Droege, Sam 45:50
Ohh, I've got it Denticulata which is a white TP's here and I'll put it on deck while you tell me what the question is.

Maffei, Clare J 45:59
OK.
She asks.
What about?
Nomadic Juniata, the alternative to Immaculata and Mitchell and Bella and Nova and Ovada the there are a handful of people who seem confident with these IDs.

Droege, Sam 46:09
Yeah.

Maffei, Clare J 46:13
Is there a character that works for Bella versus Ovada?

Droege, Sam 46:18
So I started out with Mitchell looking at those things too.
And then was disabused of the idea that they exist as defined by Mitchell, and that they are a.
They're part of that, that Vidente group complex.
So umm, I don't use Juniata, Juniata tends to be one of the larger.
I mean, I can tell you what they would generally be classified as cuneata tends to be larger, has really big awesome CT, but several, you know, when we look at the molecules, several species groups kind of align with that.
Bella and Ovada are in a big sludge of multiple possible species groups, and it's possible that everybody said let me just focus on the angle on that.
We'll do it that way.
Umm.
And it's possible that there's host racing going on.
In other words, it's a continuum really not a well defined species concept thing, and it's just not.
It's just not clear.
And so that's why I stopped and we would have as I, I think I've mentioned before, something like Ovada and Bella are in this group and of specimens that if we.
Looked at the molecules, we could find a bunch of things that lined up, and then we looked at the specimens and you could get specimens the back, the skum of which could be solid black or solid red and Oregon solid red with a tiny black stripe.
And so there was no.
It was like the these colors which are often used in the old timers would use them, because why wouldn't you?
They're very different between the specimens are probably close for in terms of the morphological groups are probably close to meaningless.
So that's why I stopped and that's why I have pygmy a group cressoni group now, and I don't even I, you know, there also I think clades of species.
But I try to save all my nomada so that some point when someone gets the right combination or figures out names or conventions, we just couldn't come up with any more foggy that matched any kind of grouping.
OK.
So white CT group, this is a denticulata and it.
So here's our or this is as much magnification as I can get out of this.
Keep shifting a little bit as we go through here, but again, we're orienting so here are the tibial CTI mean the spurs in the back right and each time we look at the specimen, we're seeing a slightly different angle which is useful for you.
There is our, uh, little projecting triangle on the interior face, and then there is this relatively straight area.
And then a corner.
And that's where CT would live.
And indeed you can see in a very if you look very closely sort of way you have all this white hair that's generally around all the time.
So and then there's these very thin, very thin, translucent white.
That's why we call them the white CT group.
Umm, wait, and maybe there's a little bit of pale red in there.
They are a little thicker.
They are analogs to the CT elsewhere, but they just are like, yeah, we don't need to make ours particularly big, dark or distinctive.
There's just a few of these longer seetal hairs coming out.

Maffei, Clare J 50:36
Could you maybe turned down the light on that?
That might help us see contrast a little better.

Droege, Sam 50:40
OK, who giving that a shot?
Let's go.
Wait, dark.
So there's a little bit of fuzz in there.
Right here.
That's ignore that.
These are the hairs.
This is also, I just think we're again, we're up against this is this, but this basically is what you're gonna look at is something that if you look very closely, you could say there are a few starting near the triangle, usually the pattern on a lot of these groups is that the hairs closest to the triangle are longest.
And then there's a diminishment as you get further away to the corner, I don't know, I haven't made any kind of study of that, but that seems to be the general pattern.
So here is one.
OK.
And then we have some a small set of others, but they are basically so thin, so near to white that in most cases you probably would just, you know, not even notice that there were these CT there and but there if there are So what in some ways the way to characterize this is the lack of obvious CT even though there are CT and that when you do realize ohh I'd almost all of them have CT there is one or two that theoretically have no CD I can't remember how much I believe that or not or.
Just not obvious.
I think they're they're truly are a couple that don't have any anything going on down there, but most do.
So particularly when you have something that has the pattern, which we're gonna zoom back out here, the pattern that is this, which is the, these are all dirt ball species.
Nomada is quite common.
These are part of the clay that invades andrina nests and they.
So there's a a quite of an abundance.
So when you see something like this, you pretty much know they're going to have CT.
And so when you see, if you look closely and like, I don't really see anything, you're probably looking at one of the white CT groups.
Additionally, the Nice thing is in those two that the OR we can move in close.
There's not a bidentate mandible.
There is a simple mandible, meaning it is just a blade.
There's no tooth set back, so that bidentate ones, it's really not like there's a tooth and a tooth right at the tip.
It's like a mitten.
So you have a the end, so that would be count as one tooth and then a bump up here.
Very similar to a lot of the helicity up here, and that is your second tooth and the other groups don't have that.
But visually from here you wouldn't know.
Yeah, without looking at the manuals, whether you have a bidentate or not, unless you also looked at the CT cause the bytecode groups tend to have then CT but dark red, and sometimes they can be very obvious cuneata type of thing, and maculata and other times it's just like the one we saw before, which would have been in that.
That Bella and ovada type of group, but there's several other names out there, also derensis and things like that.
That umm.
Would also make sure it's in the right place.
Be.
Labeled that way.
So.

Maffei, Clare J 54:52
We're starting to come up to time, though I'm not an immediate need to cut us off.

Droege, Sam 54:54
OK, this is this is probably good.

Maffei, Clare J 54:57
Umm, but.

Droege, Sam 54:59
Ohh hey, let's see if I I have 1/2 fabulous.
There's a couple that have massive numbers of ICT.
I'm can't remember half fabulous is one or not half ebulus is.
I'm pretty sure a weird.
You Sierra.
Ohh. Lovely.
OK, we have to show this one and then we can stop.
Uh userra.
Yes, parasite, very uncommon in east more common in the Midwest and potentially the West.
And just make sure I've got the good view angle on this.
So it looks pretty good.
Over this past couple years, I think I've gotten better at manipulating this microscope.
OK, these are big.

Maffei, Clare J 55:58
10 out of tensor.

Droege, Sam 56:01
Pardon.

Maffei, Clare J 56:03
I'd say you're correct.

Droege, Sam 56:05
OK.
So this is a big honking nomada it might be the largest bit in Superba is a additional species in the same group.
Alright, so you can see tibial spur sneaking up behind.
And.
I'm not 100% sure, but I believe that's the triangle there, and here's the front face and it's all filled with all sorts of CT here.
I think that we're still on dark mode.
Let me just pump up the lighting, yeah.
And there is an errant fiber in there, but you can see that it's not as dense as some in some that literally they're all packed together.
There is no spacing in between, but there's a lot more CD here and these are a little bit more on the yellow, a little more on the translucent edge, but still quite thick.
Not super long, so they're about as long as the surrounding white or yellowish hairs.
In this particular case, so.
I guess I'll stop and ask if people have any sital questions at this moment.

Maffei, Clare J 57:40
We'll has added in the chat that there are a few around Puget Sound where he cannot find any CT at all.
That is, none are different from CDL.
Somewhere on the surface of the tibia.

Droege, Sam 57:53
To you're finding some nomada without CT.
Is that?
Did I hear that right?

Maffei, Clare J 58:00
Please, so well, if you're still here on Mike.

Droege, Sam 58:01
OK.
Well, so the other thing is the mails which we haven't really broached yet.
Have CT that are usually the shadows.
This is what males often do, so the males often have a much lighter.
Set of characters you know their shadows of a strong character that a female has, like molecularly, I guess it can't really get rid of them.
Like I don't need CT, only the females need CT, but they'll still have some semblance of that.
So those get really, you know, we're looking at subtlety with the females.
You want to talk about subtlety.
Wait till we get to the males when the CT are still valuable.
But it's really a weak, much weaker version, very similar to like Lazy Blossom.
You know, try to find the weekend in veins and the wings and the males is much more subtle than in the females.
But I do think that there are legit is a few namada.
Nothing's coming to mind.
So they're not common species that don't have CT.
Vegana might be one I can't recall.

Maffei, Clare J 59:23
Well, things they might be more common around there?
Andrew asks.
Did Sam say which use sirens?
A fibrous, affabile us are associated with.

Droege, Sam 59:38
I don't know a lot of times these are.
Not super definitive.
It's like I saw this be going into a nest of F fabulous or or a nest of use for a fill in the blank.
Or they're hanging around a little aggregation.
And sometimes, you know, they'll they'll someone will dig out a nest and find one in there.
But you know, like the smoking gun, like, yes, the species goes into the nest.
And while in there is laying an egg in there and then coming back out, and then they indeed a specimen of that species, successfully emerged from that nest, that's a lot of work and very rarely is it taken to that level.
So I'm not sure, just the whole thing on hosts and parasites and umm, and who's related to who is really known only in the broadest sense that a lot of the information is implied like ohh I always catch this thing when I see these things.
So it must be a desperate side of it.
So any observation is useful.

Maffei, Clare J 1:00:55
Catherine responds that Catherine spends that Superba and Edwards.
I have confirmed user and hosts and they're in the same subgenus as a fabulous.

Droege, Sam 1:01:06
Yep, Yep.
And suburba can occur in the east.
The other one is like a Midwest to West thing.
But I don't.
I don't know.
I it could be they would, if given the opportunity to purchase them all the user are pretty much all spring species, but gosh it could be.
They they're only doing Hamada or something too, or I mean, you have superba and affable us potentially doing the same work in the same crowd.
How do they divide that up?
So many questions and you know, no, no nomada.
No andrina or userra or fill in the blank equipment is really interested in being parasitized, so one would think that over the years the battle, the escalation of competition and countermeasures, and it's like a war, you know, one thing develops some strategy that works a lot.
And then the other develops a countervailing strategy.
So it's gotta be deliciously complicated by now.
They've had 100 billion years to figure it out.

Maffei, Clare J 1:02:39
She has corrected that Edwardsi is actually an internal parasite, but still that war concept holds true.

Droege, Sam 1:02:50
Yep.

Maffei, Clare J 1:02:50
Where do you want to go next week, Sam?

Droege, Sam 1:02:53
I mean, we can continue with Numata.
There's, umm, a bunch of and the females we can go like.
How do you tell female luteal aloides from imbricata at some point?
I'm gonna just run out of specimens that are going to be useful to keep, you know.
So are we could just shift to the mails and talk about Mayo characters, some characters that are only in the male, maybe another session where I talk about special features of like denticulate of, you know, that's the males have the specialized features, depressive females, super easy to ID.
She can show the character for that, but sometimes it's a little difficult to like.
What if you know it's not a super common species, but once you see what I'm talking about, it's like ohh I get it and we can talk about.
We haven't really talked about the pseudo pygidial area, which often is.
Characteristic it's not used very much because it's very difficult in some cases except for depressa and a few other species too.
Quantify differences, but a bunch of times you'll look at specimens and go like ohh this.
The suit of pygidial area?
That's quite different.
So that adds to the balance sheet of why it's one thing and not another or why it's different from one thing and another.
So we can tackle those and.
And then move into some male characters.
Again, I can't do a complete job because I've all my specimens are for now down, Smithsonian.
But we can bring that back out, but it's useful, I think, to become familiar with a lot of these characters.

Maffei, Clare J 1:04:43
That sounds good.
I have a feeling that we're gonna need an open office hours for this one.
After the complexity of jumping around, so start gathering your questions.

Droege, Sam 1:04:49
Mm-hmm.
Well, yeah.
So we'll gather your questions and and then taking pictures, right?

Maffei, Clare J 1:04:57
Hmm. Backs.

Droege, Sam 1:04:57
So you starting to know like ohh these are, you know people send me pictures regularly and clear.
I'm sure they send them to you too, so take you know you can take pictures of the CTO pattern and some of these other subtleties, and we can discuss.
Or not.

Maffei, Clare J 1:05:20
Yep.
Well, I think we're wrapped.
I took notes that next time we're gonna start with uh.
Nutritious versus imbricata and maybe depressa.

Droege, Sam 1:05:31
Umm.

Maffei, Clare J 1:05:32
That'll probably take us through glass.
Yay.
See all the next week.

Droege, Sam 1:05:38
All right.
Great.
Thanks Claire.

Maffei, Clare J 1:05:43
Thank you, Sam.

Droege, Sam 1:05:45
Hi everyone.

Maffei, Clare J stopped transcription