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Hymenoptera Velvet Ant

Mutilla Basiornata

Photo by kschabba
Published on Project Noah
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Field Notes

Description:

Found this strange ant in Lonavala, India. I think it is a queen ant but dont know what species.

EDIT: Thanks to Simon Stock for species ID suggestion.

Habitat:

Dry grass lands and rocky hills.

Notes:

Species ID Suggestions

Velvet Ant

Mutilla Basiornata

Reference Link
Simon Stock
2

Comments (16)
MSJpsweemer
Velvet Ant might be one of the non-social species of ants. I'm not totally sure but I think this is the case.
Ashish
Great Macro work kschabba...!! I must missed this fantastic spotting...
Ashish
Great ID work Simon.... Many Indian Arthropods are not properly documented and published...
Simon Stock
I've ID'd your great spotting. I'm an ant lover and in my search for more species I seem to come across more wasps. If you have any Ant spottings I have a mission called Ant Empire http://www.projectnoah.org/missions/12553385 but it looks like I'll be starting a wasp/bee mission very soon.
kschabba
They sure are hard to click this one just wouldn't take a break, i just upped a video its slowed down to 25% to give a better look at her. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=faf-82Dmndc
Saber
Female of Cow killer (timulla), i dont know which species exactly is ? :) we have many here in Morocco :) !
Aaron_G
Did you find her incredibly hard to photograph? Every velvet ant I've followed would not stop for a rest. :-)
Agustín Amenabar L
Beautiful! It helped me a lot to look for "Mutillidae" on a local group of nature enthusiasts, that's how I identified the one I found. These are beautiful creatures.
kschabba
thanks will be putting up more pictures soon
HemaShah
Great find!! Hope to see more species from Lonavala! Beautiful , Beautiful Hill station!
MartinL
Ants, bees and wasps are all in the order Hymenoptera and a group of (sometimes) wingless wasps are called (possibly confusingly) velvet ants. I have spotted a wingless wasp with winged male here http://www.projectnoah.org/spottings/8474737 . Yoiur velvet ant is a wasp. http://www.biosurvey.ou.edu/okwild/misc/vant.html
kschabba
hey thanks for the warm welcome, thanks for pointing me in the right direction this definitely is a subspecies of the velvet ant ( http://www.beetlesofafrica.com/beetle_detail.asp?beetleid=593&page=1&count=y ) This particular one has a striped abdomen which initially led me to believe that it was some kind of a wasp with broken wings.
Gordon Dietzman
I'm not finding anything on the Internet. I'm finding the same pages over and over again and I may need to give it a rest and try it again. I still think it is a velvet ant, but can't find any more information on this particular wasp.
Gordon Dietzman
Welcome to Project Noah. I'm wondering if this is not an ant, but a wingless wasp. Did you see others in the area? This looks very much like a member of the Mutillidae--the so called velvet ants, but which are actually wingless wasps. See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutillidae for more information, but I'll do some research as well.
KarenL
Great spot! Welcome to Project Noah kschabba!

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PublishedJanuary 25, 2012

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