Posted by Alex Wild on May 24, 2010 This looks like it could be painful. What is it?
Five points to the first person to name the organism, and five for the structure.
The cumulative points winner for the month of May will win either 1) any 8×10 print from my insect photo gallery, or 2) a guest blog post on the (safe-for-work) topic of their choosing.
[SEM image by the lovely and talented Elle Camino]
Praying Mantis limb?
Well the structure looks like a raptorial appendage, probably that of a Mantid. So… I’ll call it Tenodera aridifolia.
Pseudoscorpion?
I suppose more specifically the tibia and femur of a praying mantis. It looks like the tarsus got in there too.
I’ll go with Tenodera sinensis, and I will also stop posting!
Well, Allen, Larry seems pretty confident, so I’m going to wager 40 points on Larry Hovis.
Just to be different I am going to go with a mantid fly.
It’s a mantis foreleg, as already said. However, it’s not _Tenodera_ because it only has three discoidal spines (_Tenodera_ should have four) so it’s either an orthoderine or an iridopterygine. Unfortunately I wouldn’t know your local mantids so I can’t take it any further.
The only thing I wonder about here, is if it is a mantis foreleg, why was it necessary to take the image with an electron microscope? If it was an adult mantis, it would have been big enough for optical photography. Was it a mantis nymph, by any chance? Possibly one that just hatched?
Everyone else did all the work, leading me to guess it’s the mesial surface of the right forelimb of an immature [i]Stagmomantis caroliniana[/i].
Is the specific epithet caroliniana or just carolina ?
How about a dryinid wasp? Perhaps Dryinus?
Good catch, Peter. It is simply “carolina”.
I am going with an amblypigid foreleg.
A raptorial leg (modified foreleg) of most likely a mantis, but it could possibly also be a mantispid (Neuroptera).
My guess would be a mantid nymph judging from the size
If so, just for clarification’s sake on the body parts, the bottom wide part is the femur, the smaller part on the top right is the tibia, and the extension from the tibia going out to the left is the tarsus
I’m guessing head lice (louse) on a human hair.
Going with Christopher Taylor’s comment, I’ll say Orthodera ministralis, though having kept Tenodera it looks a lot like that too. Pity points, please?
If I’m wrong it has to be the great appendage of some newly discovered Cambrian arthropod ‘thingy’.
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