Learn to ID Bees-20240904_130426-Meeting Recording

September 4, 2024, 5:04PM

1h 0m 39s

Droege, Sam 0:03
Right.

Maffei, Clare J started transcription

Droege, Sam 0:03
One thing I would mention is that Claire and I may be leaving on Wednesday.
Next week I'll get back to you.

Maffei, Clare J 0:12
Great.
So the announcement for the recording is that we might be out for the next week or two.

Droege, Sam 0:13
So.
OK, but I'm looking forward to.
I would like to be there for Catherine's talk about nomada.
If we if that can be arranged.
Umm, so there's just a couple more things I wanted to cover and I'm going to share and we will go to discover life guide and then go to the camera.
And that is the group that we call the White CT group includes things like say I illinoinensis isoniazid and there's several others.
And they're very difficult to tell apart.
And then when you look at the molecules they had the similar problem that the byte entrants had.
They're very closely related.
I'm going.
Sorry, sneeze and so let's go and work on that Group A little bit because they they're very common species, just like the bike dictate species the Pitney.
So what we've done is come up with sort of general classes that are.
Not what should I say?
They're not satisfactory really, but it allows us to at least categorize some of the species that we're coming across that are in that white CT group without saying white CT species.
So to be worked on, maybe Catherines made some progress on it?
Hopefully, and I mean you can see some differences.
We'll talk about it, right.
So we go to hmm.
Discover I'm gonna.
Did I share?
I don't think I did it.
That's why it's not working.

Maffei, Clare J 2:02
You have not shared and before you go too far.
Could you give us a rundown of this species in the group?

Droege, Sam 2:05
Mm-hmm.

Maffei, Clare J 2:10
So we can have a little list for ourselves.

Droege, Sam 2:10
In.

Katy Lustofin 2:10
We do.

Droege, Sam 2:13
In the white CT group, is that what you're talking about?

Maffei, Clare J 2:16
Yes, which you're also calling the pigmy group or those separate.

Droege, Sam 2:22
No, that's a subgroup.
Sorry white, say T white CT species include a long list of things, and there are a bunch of names we don't use at all because we are mystified as to the taxonomy of those beezies.

Maffei, Clare J 2:24
Subgroup of the White City.

Droege, Sam 2:39
One thing that we learned when looking at the molecules with Molly Rightmyer's was that both the Vidente group and the White CT group have the ability within a CO1 molecular clade.
In other words, everything's lining up.
If you look on the molecule list and they look in and then they not only did they line up, they look relatively similar.
If you take all the specimens out in terms of size, shape, morphology.
But what doesn't look the same as the are the colors and in the past many species were essentially just described by morphology plus color.
So in this case, though, morphology is the same and and the colors differ.
And yet they're all lining up with the same molecular signature.
When we look at the mitochondrial DNA, the Co one, now something more sophisticated is called for and within the.
Umm this group and they all.
So there's there's two problematic.
Umm, sets of specimens with sets of names and all these names may or may not match, so some are synonyms, some probably need to be separated out.
Associations between males and females are pretty ambiguous too, and in particular the males can go from almost completely black to almost completely red, and the manipulations i.e.

Katy Lustofin 4:11
Umm.

Droege, Sam 4:14
Yellow markings on the abdomen and elsewhere, but mostly on the abdomens.
Particularly again in the mails, but also the females can go from almost stripes to I think probably in a few cases stripes to almost nothing.
In other words, they usually do retain at least spots on T2 and T3.
That's the classic as two is the 1st place.
Usually in nomada that a marking will show up and then they you know they they start blending.
So and in the past, though, people saw this variation and they would claim it to be different species.
And so there's a bunch of names rattling around there that are essentially what we would call on the books.
So they are names that have not been subsumed by anything else by any researcher, and so they're available to be used.
But when you look at the keys and the guides, but it was pretty clear that what was going on as you were keying out, umm, a variety of taxa that are.
Is that mushed together in some not particularly clear way?
So we just came up with some general morphology kinds of things with, you know, color patterns that we recognize as universal are somewhat universal to that group.
And with acknowledging that within those groups there are going to be differences, so we have a pigmea group.
These are all have white CTS.
So when I say White CT when we'll show this, I'm talking about that instead of having what we saw in the previous sections where you have the white CT, same place on the apex of the hind tibia, you have instead of the dark peglike or thickened reddish, usually CT, that are very different from the white hairs.
You have a much subtler situation.
The CTR still there.
Again, we're gonna show this the CT are still there, but they're much more in alignment in terms of structure to the existing white hairs.
When you look closely you can see ohh they don't really have branching and they're ever so slightly thickened, but they're most of the time a clear white, so you transparent translucent similar to the hairs.
So making it irritatingly difficult, sometimes at first glance to see what's going on, but with our usual tricks of turning it upside down and looking for relative length, they fortunately do project out from the surrounding hairs.
So and the fact that there is nothing to go on is also illuminating.
There's also a couple things on the books that theoretically have no CT, and it's difficult without the DNA work to really be sure if those are actual species, because most of them have one specimen at the type or a couple, and I think I wanna say floor Legos is one of the I'm not sure about that.
And so we're going to take a little exploration of this tranche and we're going to hope that young taxonomists like Catherine are going to.
Move us into a good space.
I think we'll, I have some a box of things called pigmea here and we'll move into that and let's just start with a well, a a view from on top and then we'll go into, yeah, this is a good enough into looking at the specimen as a whole.
Any questions out there yet?
Because it sound like it and umm, so this is just a very generic looking nomada because it's common.

Maffei, Clare J 8:17
You need.

Droege, Sam 8:17
So there by default it's it's generic, so these would be associated.

Maffei, Clare J 8:20
You need to share your screen my friend.

Droege, Sam 8:23
Oh, yeah, right.
So these are things that show up in the spring usually.
So I'm trying to think I don't think any of these migrate beyond would say mid summer into the fall bidentate or the White City group were all spring.
So almost certainly all associated with Andrina Spring endrina super common in woods.
You can often see them like if you're in a path in the woods.
That's where sometimes endrina like to nest.
You'll just see the nomada sort of floating around looking for nesting up, nesting or nest grabbing opportunities.
Alright, I'm really gonna share now.
I think we'll go right to the microscope.
Rather than discover life, people will look at discover life and see if they have any questions there in this thing that you can't see out of the way.
And we're going to.

Maffei, Clare J 9:23
And what species are you gonna bring on deck?

Droege, Sam 9:26
This is a would be the pigmea group thing.
So we'll talk.
We'll just show the CT, which are defining that it is a white CT group, and then within that group we'll talk about why am I calling this pigmea.
And you'll see that it's, umm, not as clear as you would like because it isn't.
And sure, there's several species in there.
Alright, I think I have made this live and.
Let's go here and move this in, and I think both women, it's possible.
I don't have the cord in the back set up.
I don't the heck is that.
And that is the plug.
This is how it should be in there.
OK.
And that's on and that's on so.
Nope, I am alive.
I just didn't realize it.
Alright, we will bring down the magnification and that's part of the problem.
And we're gonna look at a female.
We'll look at females first here within this group and we'll make it full screen.
Why so focus?
So standard standard Numata in terms of find these by the bucket load and the spring.
They're very common and we're seeing in the females are almost always read, usually with black down the center and we whiter it could be less wide.
It doesn't seem to matter that much and there's umm combinations of dark and light areas in the face and elsewhere.
Patterns vary quite a bit.
Most of the focus.
Here's the pygidial pseudo pygidial area.
We'll probably zoom in there.
So you just get a look at pseudo pygidial areas and just to note that there are differences.
But, umm, the place that you see within the females, a lot of umm effort in descriptions has to do with the what a lovely animal.
Has to do with.
The markings on the side.
This is pretty classical.
OK, so they can be smudgy.
Usually it's a little clearer than this, but usually T2 and T3 are the first places to see these Marks and they're variable, but this is pretty standard one there.
One there about those locations and then they expand in size and often then move into more oblong markings.
And then sometimes they approach each other as if to make stripe in every once in a while not in this particular species group, but in a couple of the other white CT groups that are less common.
They will.
The two markings will kiss right here in the middle, but you'll still see a dark line that's separating them.
In other words, it's not a continuous line of yellow like you see in the the, umm, uh, things like imbricata and several other species that do have complete, unbroken working.
So in the literature they often will call this a umm the the stripe is broken in the middle, meaning that there's some kind of gap or even a like light line.
Let's move in.
Just because we're here and we're gonna look at the pseudo pygidial area again and it's not particularly this would be because it's so common when it change the lighting, it's by default of its commonness.
The standard mom coloration a little too much.
Here and and.
Let's see if I can make this big.
And get it again.
Here we go.
So.
So here's the pseudo pygidial area, and here's the pygidium of the female.
And every once in a while, there's some characters here.
But we essentially never use this plate.
Often it's retracted and you can't see it either in terms of ID.
What we're and even the pseudopodia area is not commonly used because they all have one and the differences are slight.
But when you're doing comparisons among the specimens you have on hand, it pays to look.
And if you have some, hypothetically these are more than one species notions in your head, you would look at the pseudo pygidial areas of your two species and see if you notice any differences because there is quite a bit of variation within the suicidio areas.
But so difficult to really describe.
In most cases, these that you can vaguely see here are relatively narrow.
A few species like we can throw up a Lehigh census, for example, and these hairs are not as dense and they they still they're denser than the hairs on the rest of the segment and they formed their flattened and they're sort of knife like plate like things that are coming down and make a very different presentation.
Like I said though, difficult to really be able to see one nomada and classify it in that way.
When we're looking at cressona eye kinds of things, what you'll see in the abdomen is it's bigger.
The pseudo pygidial area is wider and a little bit stronger and presentation the.
Umm, the markings are larger and usually there's a pair of markings on T5.
So 1-2 to 345 this very last one where the Pseudomugil area will have two yellow dots.
To just complicate things, there's a another white CT species in the males.
Very easy to tell apart because the antenna is scalloped, but in the female it's trickier and it's some umm nomatter denticulata I think I think it's denticulata.
Why am I thinking it's something else and denticulata has it is denticulata and denticulata looks almost the same as cressoni, but it has tiny.
We may have shown this tiny little points on the tip of the front coxy just another little subtle world of these things.
And then the the pitting on the take tegula tends to be in comparison more dense.
So, but we're back to Pigmea now.
Let's see if we can zoom in on our friend behind Tibial City.
This is probably a good place to start in terms of investigating, so here's the hind tibia.
Here's all over it.
These would be the normal hairs that any B really would have that are not modified in any particular way, and what we're gonna look at is again, we don't Orient to the, we may have to ship this a little bit.
We don't Orient to the outer face, so the outer we're we're kind of looking at the segment not in perspective.
We're looking at it from obliquely rather than what is that the perspective shop that's straight on.
So in other words, this is the rear over here.
This is the front over here, so this is the anterior and the anterior anterior.
And I'm not sure it's this is the uh, the outward facing side.
This is the interfacing side.
You can see just the differences in terms of hairs because obviously they're in a different kind of morphological environment.
And here is our rim.
Our rim is we're seeing it from the side in terms of the trying to detect the CT on it, but recall that there's always, I'm gonna say always maybe that's possible is not there's always this blunt triangular projection here.
It's not really a CT, it's as if a pinch of the integument was pulled out.
That gives orientation and usually on the far side, not always, but of the anterior that the the the outside face of behind tibia.
This is relatively straight.
Again, we're looking at it from the side and there's CT coming down amidst the white hairs.
So can I get any higher magnification?
I cannot.
We're gonna shift it to see it from the side here, but I'll point out the CT and a couple things.
So again orientation and along here, but there is one 2-3 at least that might be might not be of the White City.
So what you're looking at is and.
These tips seem to be slightly broken off.
Usually there's a little bit more length to them, but you can see how it's subtle, right?
So there's we'll also try turning this upside down to see these things a little bit better, but that's all you get right.
There's no red, there's no thick, but there is something, something different upon close inspection.
Aren't nomada wonderful?
So let's change the view here and we will move the specimen out in try and get a shot.
Ohh, there we go.
OK, without the wing interfering, that's directly looking at the outer face rather than what we were looking at before, which was an oblique view.
Sue, can I get this in view?
Pretty easily.
OK, we've got.
I'm going to leave the light very bright because we're going to move in, but orientation again.
So this was the wing that was in the way before.
There.
Here's a triangular corner.
This is the line of the anterior face, and there will be seated and along that phase, which you cannot see very well right now, because the light is high and they're very transparent.
But they are there, and possibly a little broken off, but that's the way it works in this group.
You're not going to give you the greatest characters all the time, OK, so.
Triangle other side, this is the face.
Here's the line across.
Keeps going out of focus.
I'm at my highest magnification and you can see normally the CT are clustered over here, but you can see one 2-3, maybe four at least.
So this right here, see how it's longer.
When you have a really nicely.
Performing specimen, usually one.
I guess it would be this one, but I'm not 100% sure.
It usually has a long, longest, longer and it progresses sort of down a scale of lengths, but that's all it is, right?
So those little Tom, CT, semi transparent ones are what defined the group.
So they're not red, they're not thick, they're not curved, they're not bold, and they're only a little bit different from the white hairs.
So let's pull the specimen again.
And so a lot of times it's useful to do this contrasting thing where you're trying as much as possible to get the.
CT to show up on a dark background.
We don't have tube dark a background right now we do have black clay and a black bottom.
Let's see if we can do that and see the.
I usually play with my finger behind it because I'm looking at it again.
I'm holding it with my fingers.
Want to run it back and forth?
It's very variable, like whether that's useful or not depends on the lighting and the CT.
So the light CT.
You want a dark background, the dark CT.
You want a light background, which your finger provides.
Alright, let's see if we can line up this shot here and we're upside down.
So we're looking at the Stir Knights of the abdomens. Ian.
We're zooming in.
Ohh, we may have on this side a darn.
Or do we?
Nope.
It's in front of the wing.
Good.
The wing doesn't provide as much contrast.
As I'd like to see.
So recall that you have two tibial spurs, which in the nomada that I am aware of, we never use for ID.
They all seem to be basically the same thing.
But I you know.
Keep looking because there may be different and So what that means if we're looking at it here, it means the ACT.
Yeah, there's one right there peeking out because we're looking at the wrong side.
Let's see if I can get a better shot here on the other side, like and see what's going on here a little bit better.
When you're doing this with your fingers, of course you have infinite number of possible ways to hold the.
Specimen, but this this is illustrate, illustrated illustrative.
So uh couple orientations.
Here's the big tibial spurs.
So we know that we're looking at things from the side now.
So the tibial spurs are on the backside and the front side has the tibbals CT that we're interested in.
And again, we just go back and it's like there is like we if we change the focus, it's sort of sweeping around like this.
There's one, there's another we move the focus a little bit here and there.
We just see a few of them.
You can see subtly another one right there.
Not much.
We might find some additional ones to look at, and so that makes it a White City group and the group as a whole all has a characteristic that is very similar to that.
In other words, you don't use anything within the the group.
More than that, it looks it has that presence.
So there may be subtle on subtle differences in that sital pattern, but we've never we've never used it, and the sternites rarely are also used.
Unlike many other groups, Sterneck seemed to be not helpful in many cases.
Here we can look at the Miss Episternal in this yellow patch is often.
Present in most nomada and very variable in how it's umm.
Now it's and, so those usually yellow running along like a little mustache here along the inner edge of the eye.
Actually this is the outer.
It starts underneath, we're upside down and it runs along the inner edge.
That's present and many, many different species and its length and presence, sometimes as little dots of yellow on top of the head.
Not much else to go on with that.
Let's while we've got this here.
Umm, so you know that in many ways the sital pattern is present in the male and female, but in the male it's much more reduced which is not great when you're dealing with white CT patterns, but it's still there.
Here, we're gonna pull out a lovely dark mail.
So as you can recall, we often say that well, some mails are dark and some are yellow and they appear to be exactly the same species.
That least CO1 molecule wise, so let's see if I can do this.
Here.
And we'll bring the magnification back down.
And try and find a specimen.
I've got it off screen too far.
There we go.
OK, so you can see even though it's not in focus quite a different color pattern.
This is again, why it's been sometimes tricky to tell.
This is upside down, but to tell males for females, so this is that same group and here we have these very bold yellow markings on here.
And the integument is very dark throughout, and other times it can be very red.
So a distraction, an interesting at the same time.
Now, pine tibia.
This is a male.
You can pull this down.
You can see the little bit of refocusing should be able to see a notch pygidium you can see, even though the lights strong.
Here's the notch right there and up.
And you're seeing it through a big glob of hairs.
But let's move in now.
Two behind Tibia and I think we can see at least I saw it when I was looking in the other microscope.
The long I'm city, in fact, they seem to be a little bit better defined than the other one in a way.
So here is and this.
This is actually interesting.
Umm.
And it's as I remember, but I only doing these classes.
Do you actually think sometimes in terms of comparisons?
So here we're upside down, right?
So this is there's a tibial spurs.
That's the inside half of the tibia.
And here is our little notch.
I believe right here or a little pulled out projection right on the front there.
And then here are a series of.
So here's the standard little forest of white hairs that comes with, so to speak, most bees.
And then here are the CT.
So a little stiffer, a little longer, never as far as I know, never branched and slightly sturdier.
In this case, they also project out, thank goodness, so we can see them too.
But you can see clear transparent, nothing much to them, and if then?

Maffei, Clare J 30:44
Could you speak to toward the left, closer to the tibial spur?
We can see a couple of things that might be mistaken for CT these reddish lines right there.

Droege, Sam 30:50
Mm-hmm.
Umm, yeah, sure.
And on nomada.
You can see like for example, there's a bunch of things going on and maybe we have focus too much on just these CT and there may be more that could be used for ID's.
So this is this is where the future lies.
Perhaps, but you can see like here are these CT that are here first of all, are they even CT?
I think they are.
You're right.
And if you look over here, some darker red things, and then often I'm gonna move the focus down the tibia.
You're on the tibia, and sometimes, although doesn't seem to be very much here, sometimes within the body of the tibia are more CT, so big, bold, red, CT.
I have not seen that used in any kind of taxonomy, nor have I noticed anything associated with those which does not at all mean that those aren't useful or clarifying.
It's just like there's been no one, no one talking about those so much.
Still, to do so, yeah, these are kind of places to play around when, after you look at millions and millions of the same thing, you begin to explore some of these things as you go through and look for, like, something different that catches your eye.
So that was a good observation to see that.
And I just don't know if that little row right there is meaningful or not.
But it could be all right.
So I think we are done with pigmea, unless there's any other particular questions for that group, you can see again the mail here, very different looking in there.
That's true of most of the young gonna spin the so you can see the face.
Most nomada.

Maffei, Clare J 33:05
I think our question is that you did, you did go off on a explanation of like the White CT Group contains other groups, but did you give us a summary of who to expect in this group, at least the more common ones because you did, I think, say that these are a particularly common spring group that you will encounter.

Droege, Sam 33:15
Yeah.
Right.
OK, good.
So I and hopefully I have.

Maffei, Clare J 33:35
While it is a group, right, if we have pictures and species on discover life, it can be helpful to look at those photos for more explanations, even if we're putting in our databases as group.

Droege, Sam 33:36
Examples, yeah.
Well, hopefully.
Yeah, they're all relatively common.
So I I basically have divided into the white CT group I I'm using group probably all too often or the sub group that is pigmea subgroup of the White CD group.
And then there's the Crysania subgroup Crysania subgroup in my parlance.
Again, realizing that these are almost certainly composites of several species, and then the last one is what I call the Sayhi Illinoinensis group and I'm going to.
See if I have any.
See this is the problem.
I'm not having your collection here and I don't see any of the.
I mean, look, at least Chris. Sonia.

Maffei, Clare J 34:32
And maybe like bullet points for those, UM, those jumps like we've.

Droege, Sam 34:41
Yeah.

Maffei, Clare J 34:43
We talked about sometimes with Mike and uh subgenus or or groups that he's he's identified.

Droege, Sam 34:52
Sorry, say it again.

Maffei, Clare J 34:53
If you have any bullets for like what gets you to those like the white CT group and you jump to the pig Bay subgroup due to X and the Carsoni subgroup due to Y et cetera.

Droege, Sam 35:00
Yeah.
Right.
OK, it turns out I have at least some specimens of cressoni group subgroup and Illinois and Sisai subgroup.
So first of all, the whole notion of what are I think we talked about this early on of the whole notion of what our subgenera is, super murky and we at this point don't use it, although there's lots of names running around.
And Catherine may be in her revisions, upcoming maybe.
Umm.
Revising and stabilizing some of those names for subgenera, but for us right now we're largely ignoring that and we're using things that just talk about books of species that have similar characteristics.
So right now the white CT not a probably a subgenus.
It's probably in.
If it was a subgenus, would probably might be in there with bidentate species and a couple others, but it they all have this white CT characteristic.
So we were looking at, uh, the pigmea and the larger.
So we'll talk about Chris.
Sonia.
So in comparison to pygmy and have those bullet points, it's larger, marked more in a bit more robust and a little bit larger on the pseudo pygidial area and often carrier on the lateral side.
On the other words, on the plural.
OK, I've got mails here which we can talk about and also I should say pigmea and parsonii, but particularly cressoni they have robust, let's call it mandibles.
And I'll show that on one of these.
And the CIO annoyances group are, in my mind, most clearly.
Differentiated by, well, these are all males.
Uh ooh.
Maybe not that way by the.
Thinness and delicately, relatively.
In comparison, their relative dimness of the yeah, we have a female.
What do you know umm of the?
Mandibles and a few other things, but mostly it's that thinness that breaks them out in my parlance.
OK, so I've got a Chris Sonia here and we'll a female.
We have males too, and let's look at the female.
When we put this here.
There you'll see that we're going to look at the abdomen first.
The base color is almost exactly the same in all of these, and the females, a darkish red and.
A with the yellow manipulations and a moderate amount of black interspersed.
So if we look here, but that's that's very variable and maybe even within a species, I'm gonna drop the light on this.
And if it will lets me, there we go.
Let's bring it down to 90.
There we go.
Nice, but the things back up.
So this thing, this christoni subgroup thing you can see has this base of this darker red.
And then there's blacks in there and different places.
Here is it's sort of showing up a degree of Harry Hairier Ness.
The sides would have more hair too, and when we look at the abdomen in particular, we see more yellow.
So here we have a uh yellow on T2 where again manipulations start in Nevada.
So we see that the, umm, the, the, the individual manipulations on the sides have expanded or and are moving towards each other.
This is just light here, but you can see they're much bigger than the small dots.
The T3 in all nomada are all a little bit less.
Large.
I believe they're there.
I haven't.
I might have to move the specimen to see see that in particular, and sometimes retractions of the segments prevent you from seeing all the manipulation you can see.
For example, on T4 here there is a central maculation right there and here on T5 you have a set and that wasn't there and this wasn't a year.
And here are manipulations hiding under T3 that are on the lateral side.
To some extent, there's enough translucence in the rims of the Turkey set.
Often, like you can see that this goes up and around like that just by looking right through the integument, and these appear to be spots on T3.
On there again, wouldn't it be lovely if that's would be the difference and it would be very clear and you could say, well, if it has this pattern, it's that species.
But right now there's enough variation in these things that we're not sure it's that where the boundaries are.
This pseudo pygidial area is.
Maybe it's not so much larger, but it just presents differently than the other one.
So you may not recall what that was looking like, but it's a little bit thicker and these shapes are a little bit different.
But you know how to describe that?
I can't give you a good description.
I'm gonna bump the light up here and and we can get this to acknowledge.
And we will look at.
But that this with.
More clarity.
So little the the little more, uh, little broader, I would say, and thicker and less here like I guess it's not in this dimension, not any wider, but it's it has a different look.
So if we go back now down our scale, we're going to flip the side.
We'll just look at White CT because why not and everything else doesn't differentiate very well, but ohh, actually we'll we'll look at the mandibles because the relative robustness of these mandibles is telling us the difference with the SEI, Illinois's group.
Yeah, and.
So there's nothing to really notice here in absence.
Of a different.
You know, just on its own and just want you to know that that is what a nice robust mandible looks like within the cressoni eye and also very similar to big media.
This kind of system, but again without comparison.
You how would you know that's any different?
This is another problem with the group, which is a lot of knowledge is available when you have a whole series of things to compare, rather than one species in which you this might be a good shot.
Must be zoomed omada and then trying to.
Move you to a firm decision as to what species it is without a lot of other information.
So we're gonna see a little bit here again in comparison like the side here of this specimen is relatively hairier, but how would you describe that that would be definitive when you only had this specimen from pigmea?
Because Pigmea does have hair there, it's just not quite as much.
And the answer is, it would be very difficult.
Right, let's find.

Maffei, Clare J 44:10
While we were on the the face characters, we do mention in Discover life, the uh I'm gonna get our exact wording the on the labrum, the location of the small knob or projection present along the imaginary line that runs lengthwise down the middle from the top center to bottom center.

Droege, Sam 44:15
Uh-huh.

Maffei, Clare J 44:35
Do you like to address that characteristic while we talk about the face?

Droege, Sam 44:37
Umm, yes.
So I was trying to, I think this is behind a wing here.
So this is not gonna be a good shot.
Could you tell that say that again and I'll try and pay more attention.

Maffei, Clare J 44:51
I can.

Droege, Sam 44:53
Be more present for you.

Maffei, Clare J 44:55
All good.
And or maybe you give us the feedback that you don't use this a whole lot or use it in a different group.
But it says head labrum, the location of the small knob or projection present along the imaginary line that runs lengthwise down the middle from top center to bottom center.

Droege, Sam 45:09
Umm.
Yeah.
Oh, you mean as a character, not.
It's just a cressoni, I think.

Maffei, Clare J 45:19
Not just a crisona I think, but I think it's a characteristic we haven't talked about in the last couple meetings.

Droege, Sam 45:20
Yeah. Uh-huh.
OK.
Yeah, there's quite a bit of variation in this laboral.
I'll show you on here.
We'll just load it up right here.
There's quite a bit of variation in this Laboral small laboral projection.
It can be at the very bottom.
It can be in the middle, it can be 3/4 of the way down and it could be closer to the top.
That and that is useful.
But not that useful that I use it that often, because other characters covary with it, but it is a cool character that is different across the present and mysterious.
Because what is it doing?
But you'll see projections on labor rooms in lot of different species of bees.
What the heck it is for?
Like, why do you need that projection?
So here's the massive labor room.
Conveniently, many Nomada run their mandible swords below the level here, and you can see simple, not vidente.
And there's the label projection right there, and this can go up and often goes down often.
It's parked right down there, but usually it's covarying with some very obvious other kinds of markings and things.
So in the end I end up not looking at it very often.
Again, for the people who like to stare, this might be something to that can be evolved into more distinctions.

Maffei, Clare J 46:58
So.

Droege, Sam 47:07
Yes, Claire.

Maffei, Clare J 47:08
No, I was just gonna point out.
So this is like one of those characters where we have the the, the little green numbers next to them and a lot of the ones seem like they've been marked for several.

Droege, Sam 47:16
Umm.

Maffei, Clare J 47:18
But for 1/3 of the way from the top, we only have four and it looks like three of them are fairly.

Droege, Sam 47:22
Hmm.

Maffei, Clare J 47:26
Common we have with anei Leonsis, and then the pigmea that you're mentioning earlier.
So I would assume that that character goes more broad than that with the rest of the group.
But it looks like maybe it's one of those characters that when it's useful, it's really useful, and then otherwise it's everybody's kind of in the middle.

Droege, Sam 47:47
Well, there's, I would say yes to that, but that it is rare.
In fact, I can't think of any examples where the labor this laborum projection, this lovely little laborum projection, is a definitive character, and so maybe it's because.

Maffei, Clare J 48:05
Aqua Bilara, I scored only for that, but I'm sure it's not the only thing that's.

Droege, Sam 48:11
Which what is the what's in what?

Maffei, Clare J 48:13
Umm, aquarium.

Droege, Sam 48:16
Ohh yeah, that's not a species that I have a lot of experience with.
It's a Midwestern Prairie to the West species, and it's got super obvious other characters like it's bright white, for example, in terms of its instead of being yellow, so the manipulations are not yellow, they're white and it's got problem.
I I just don't see it enough to know what my ID string is through the identification process for that species.
It's basic like gets to the Dakotas.
Maybe it's in Minnesota.
I'm not sure and someone else could inform me about that, so it's not one.
I have tons of experience with.

Maffei, Clare J 48:58
Do a pictures, it looks weird.

Droege, Sam 49:00
Yeah.
So there's lots of these kinds of features around and that could be more useful than we realize if we spent more time looking at them and defining them among species, groups and things.
But I have to tell you that when I'm doing ID so nomada, I'm really not looking at the Laboral projection very much.
OK, so ohh we can look at a basically upside down B for the ctol patterns.
Again, maybe just let's see what we got here and it's like we.
May not be in a good position here, because I think we're looking at the.
Spur side the interior side of these things.
You can find it.
Ohh actually got it like below.
It was like I really wouldn't progress.
What the heck are we looking at?
There is.
So here's a hind tibia.
Here's a sperm and to look at, I can zoom in with my why?
Didn't know that with my roller.
I don't even know what those things are.
I don't think those are our friends.
They don't think.
I think they're coming out from the interior.
Let me let me look at it under my microscope and get a better view of this.
It's possible.
That's those mysterious other elements that you identified in that last one.
Umm.
Yeah.
Do you think if we have a good shot at this?
Who?
See, one thing is broken off.
Create this to see if I bend it this way.
We have a wing in the way problem in another.
When there's broken, what?
We'll see.
Is basically the same thing that we saw with the others, but it's useful to see him in more than one species or specimen.
Get back down.
Find their specimen that stink is going to give us a view.
You can see though, the big yellow spots on the lateral sides of the abdomen a little bit better now.
And.
Moving in.
Hmm, there is the.
To be will spur.
Yeah, this one.
Is not as friendly with the visuals on its CT white CT.
I wanna say that this is the projection of the triangle and then the CT which keep going out of focus.
Are.
Right here.
Not a great look.
There's 123 shorter than we saw in the other specimens, and just by playing with the focus you can see actually.
Interestingly, if we look at the integument base, you can see where the CTR and I don't know how C versus here is work, but you can kind of see can we drill in with the visual.
Again, ooh, maybe we can.
You could see how these CT are coming out of the integument on the rim, and the hairs are to the interior.
Very strange magnifications, but you can see 1234 is that is that working?

Maffei, Clare J 53:49
She that's a pretty good for us.
Yeah.

Droege, Sam 53:55
This time it's OK good, but again you can see transpose.
This sound seems to have a faint hint of pink or red in there, which do see every once in a while, but not a whole lot different from the hair widths.
But there there's still there, and certainly not like the big, thick red things we were looking at previously.
So what time do we have, Claire?

Maffei, Clare J 54:23
We're right up.
Was wondering if you wanted to show the more, less robust mandibles for a quick compare and what I took note of is that your big may subgroup has robust mandibles and some other stuff that I think I missed.

Droege, Sam 54:31
Yes, I do.
I do.

Maffei, Clare J 54:45
Uh Chris Sonia is the largest, more maculated.
Umm the Citydeal area is larger, robust, thicker.

Droege, Sam 54:51
Mm-hmm.

Maffei, Clare J 54:55
However, you wanna use that carrier sides mandibles and that you're, say, illinoinensis group is delicate mandibles.

Droege, Sam 55:05
Great.
They're also tend to be smaller the overall, so the size goes CIL and OC pigmea, cressona and body size.
With no clear what the what the boundaries are are not defined well because I don't feel like measuring them.
If I because I feel like the whole thing is, umm, a bit of a merchant, the whole taxonomy, but I can tell that there are these are definitely different things.
Let's call them.
Nope, there we go.
And you can see by the size of the pin here too that this is a smaller.
Specimen by quite a bit.
Alright, so we're going to from time perspective, we're going to jump to the mandible.
You can get there.
Walking this thing over.
Oops.
Oh wait, do I have this spinner?
Period.
They had it artificially bumped up.
So it's the kind of thing again you would want your more than one, but a lot of times you get all these three and or these three subgroups, let's call them in the same place.
But you can kind of think, I think if you have retained what these things look like in your mind, you can see this is a lot thinner and more delicate, usually a little bit longer, but that's it's less about that, more about the relative width of the mandible in comparison to the body size.
So it's just a more delicate mandible and that would be.
I'm gonna flip it so we can see it from a slightly different angle, but that's the basics.
Umm.

Maffei, Clare J 57:21
Was there anything else you wanted to say about the subgroup characteristics?

Droege, Sam 57:24
Saying about what? Sorry.

Maffei, Clare J 57:27
Individual subgroup characteristics.
You've given us the size rundown mandible stuff.

Droege, Sam 57:32
Yeah.
The umm.
Say I it's.
It's got two names instead of one because there's probably more clearly more than one species, but I I could not differentiate.
Say I from Illinois NC and the umm, you know, according to Mitchell and he was pretty much the last person to tackle nomada in the east.
And so these would key out to those species in his key.
But several of the others are just not mentioned, like Ulster, Rensis and Townsey, and those are all white, CT things, I think.
And they're in there.
But are they just color variation?
I'm not sure and you can see like this one, if we flip it over to look at the top, the basic model is pretty darn similar.
To the others, it's just smaller, thinner mandibles, and it's a good character.
This Catherine here.
Is she on today?
I think she said she was away, right.

Maffei, Clare J 58:49
Yeah, she's not available today, and I'm about to turn off the recording but leave the Umm room open for y'all to continue.
Just a moment here.

Droege, Sam 59:01
I'm going to take the light back down.

Maffei, Clare J 59:10
So when I close out the room, I would really invite, we would love folks to provide input on what they wanna see next.
You know, it seems like we've kind of wrapped up nomadic here.
With what Sam has in his collection?
Uh, it doesn't seem likely that we will be able to get our friends to join us for andrina for a while.
So we were thinking about popping back into that with what we have, but if there are other requests, umm, you know could also see if Joel is ready to come back for to wrap up.
Lacio blossom.
But we always like requests.
It's really helpful to know what you guys need.
Umm.

Droege, Sam 59:48
Yeah.

Maffei, Clare J 59:48
And now now I'm I need to stop the recording, but the party can keep going.
I won't close the room.

Droege, Sam 59:54
Yeah.
So you can see I guess with this one, the pin is relatively large, so this is small thing, but they're the there's T2 with the big yellow ones and T3 with smaller and the pins hiding the remainder.
But it's pretty much the same format, and if we go in and look at the tibia, we would see white CT again, but from the size slash the mandible.
Umm.
Delicacy.
You can see that, umm, that would be my measure of like, OK, this is say IOC group and the there are these size differences between the three. But that's like the average right.

Maffei, Clare J stopped transcription