BWARS AGM Programme 14th and 15th September 2024
Venue: Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford
Saturday 14th September 2024
Workshop 1 Nomada 11.30 – 1pm Steven Falk
Workshop 2 Priocnemis 2pm – 3.30pm Bogdan Wiśniowski
General ID help until 4.30
Sunday 15th September 2024 10.00 – 16:30
10:15 BWARS AGM (members only)
Agenda
The Chair, Richard Dawson, will take the chair to… Read more
BWARS AGM Programme 14th and 15th September 2024
Venue: Oxford University Museum of Natural History, Oxford
Saturday 14th September 2024
Workshop 1 Nomada 11.30 – 1pm Steven Falk
Workshop 2 Priocnemis 2pm – 3.30pm Bogdan Wiśniowski
General ID help until 4.30
Sunday 15th September 2024 10.00 – 16:30
10:15 BWARS AGM (members only)
Agenda
The Chair, Richard Dawson, will take the chair to commence the business of the day.
… Read moreAn ant species new to Britain Tapinoma pygmaeum (Dufour 1857) has been found in Royston Herts. They seem to be thriving and have several nests with many queens in a private garden and have also been seen in two other gardens with one being 200m away. The resident, a professional gardener, recognised some very small black ants in his garden as something special about 5 years ago. It was only when he posted some photos and notes on the UK Bees, Wasps and Ants FaceBook page that interest was piqued. Samples were requested and some sent to… Read more
A recently introduced very small black Tapinoma which unlike the two native Tapinoma has no clear notch in the clypeus. It was first noticed as an unusually small black ant around 2019 but was only identified to species in 2024.
T. impurum is a native species of western, central and southern Europe, similar in general appearance and habits to T. caespitum, except for being lighter in colour on average, and less thermophilic in its choice of nesting sites.
Until Wagner et al. (2017) showed how the two species could be reliably distinguished by precise morphometric parameters, T. impurum was tentatively separated from T. caespitum in the female castes on subjective qualitative characters, such as lighter colour and coarser dorsal sculpture of the petiole nodes. As… Read more
A new key to Nomad bees by Steven Falk including species accounts and photographs has been added to the .
Else & Edwards Understandings Reference
A new, downloadable, draft key to the Pompilidae (spider-hunting wasps) plus a link to the Pompilidae section of Steven Falk's Flickr site has been added to the Identification guides page
This mining bee has been renamed from Andrena similis Smith,1849, it is a close relative of Andrena wilkella (Kirby), with which it could easily be confused. However, it differs from that species in having the postscutellum, and the lateral and posterior margins of the scutellum clad with very dense, short, erect, reddish-orange hairs. In addition the posterior hair-band of the third gastral tergite is very widely broken. In A. wilkella the surfaces of the scutellum and postscutellum are largely glabrous, and the posterior hair-band of the third tergite is only… Read more
The bibliography that was on the BWARS site up to June 2023 has sadly been lost. Fortunately an archived copy exists and can be accessed from a link on the Bibliography page via the Resources menu.
