Golden Yellow Chalcid Wasp

Gorgeous pictures! I love Chalcids, they never cease to be amazing.

Great spotting, Sckel. It is amazing how very different critters evolve in the same direction. Check the rear legs of this beetle: http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/30765300

Sckel - don't be disappointed at all. The chalcids are a VERY difficult group - I have been looking at them for over 35 years and I am still confused and surprised all the time. Many of these complex insect groups are long term passions of discovery rather than something that you will ever understand quickly or completely.

Your little friend, nice!

Very nice series!

Hi Sckel - I don't think the two wasps are the same (yours and the one at http://luis.impa.br/photo/0707_vespa_desovando/) Look at the big swollen part of the hind leg - in the luis.impa wasp there are 5-6 very long teeth or spines on the leg; in your wasp there more, smaller teeth (see them in your last picture). This is one of the characters they use to identify species. Also, look at this page - http://eol.org/pages/32207/overview and you can see some pictures of Conura mariae (identified at the USNM), and the teeth on the leg look more like yours than the luis.impa one. At any rate - I agree that this is a very cool wasp.

Você acha umas vespinhas bem legais :P

Beautiful photo. These are wonderful insects. Note that the name Spilochalcis is an old name, and the currently recognized generic name is Conura. Note also that there are over 300 species in this genus, and identification from a photo is quite tricky. Best to leave it as Conura sp. unless you can get an expert to pitch in with an identification.