Until working with the Beatty Collection, I had never heard of a spoonwing, much less seen one of these fascinating insects. Like our lone Libellago specimen, the spoonwing (shown below) was discovered undetermined and tucked away in cigar box full miscellaneous odonates.
Spoonwings, which will also answer to spoon-winged Lacewings or thread-winged Antlions, are neuropteran insects belonging to the family Nemopteridae (Atlas of Living Australia. 2015). These insects derive their common name from their elongated and paddle-like hindwings, which are waved in mating displays and, in males, will secrete pheromones. Consequently, this modification forces the insect to fly using primarily their forewings, producing a clumsy and delicate flight (Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. 2003). From the ornate hindwings of our specimen, we believe it to be within Chasmoptera (Kirby, 1900), a genus comprised of only three species.
Unlike the majority of the collection’s residents, spoonwings are not found in the Americas but are distributed across Europe, Africa, Asia, and Australia. Our specimen was collected in Lebanon in (Grzimek’s Animal Life Encyclopedia. 2003).
Spoonwings are rare to spot in the wild outside of their mating season in November (Atlas of Living Australia. 2015), so finding such an unique specimen in our collection was exciting for an amateur entomologist.
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