Weather interrupted our sort session this week, and I had to duck out early for a meeting (despite saying I wouldn’t schedule anything for Wednesdays!).
I did spend an hour and a half sorting ensign wasps from the eastern U.S.A. It was a good reminder that this fauna needs to be revised, especially Hyptia spp. Townes (1949) has a reasonably good key to North American (north of Mexico) species, and he made an attempt to revise some of the less robust species concepts of Bradley (1908). See Smith (1998) for a more recent key of mid-Atlantic species. The differences between species are still … well … subtle and probably a bit plastic:
It’s a project for another day and/or maybe another entomologist. We have a fairly sizable collection of North American specimens!